The 9th International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (ICCM) was held in Nanjing on July 31. Professor Gao Chen of USTC was presented a silver medal of ICCM Mathematics Awards for his important contribution at the intersection of geometric analysis and algebraic geometry. The ICCM Mathematics Awards are the highest awards for ethnic Chinese mathematicians. Known as the "Chinese Fields Medal", the awards recognize ethnic Chinese mathematicians under 45 who have made outstanding achievements in basic or applied mathematics, and who have made outstanding contributions to the development of mathematics.

    Professor Gao Chen was enrolled in the USTC School of the Gifted Young (SGY) in 2008. Upon graduation in 2012, he went to Stony Brook University to pursue a Ph.D. under the guidance of Professor Xiuxiong Chen. After completing his Ph.D. in 2017, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) and then an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2021, he returned to USTC as a professor at the Institute of Geometry and Physics.

    Collaborating with Xiuxiong Chen, then the founding director of the USTC Institute of Geometry and Physics, Gao Chen completed in 2015 the classification of "gravitational instantons", a concept proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1977. In 2021, on the premise of stability, Gao Chen proved the existence of solutions to the J equation, which was independently proposed by Xiuxiong Chen and Simon Donaldson, and the existence of solutions to the supercritical Hermite-Yang-Mills equation, which was proposed by Shing-Tung Yau and others. Gao Chen won the Green Orange award bestowed by the Alibaba Group in 2021, and was the youngest winner in the history of this award.

    ICCM was initiated by Professor Shing-Tung Yau, the first Chinese winner of the Fields Medal. The first of this conference series was held in Beijing in 1998. Since then, it has been held once every three years and has become the largest and most influential top-level event in the scientific communities of ethnic Chinese around the globe. The conference awards 1~3 gold medals and 3~6 silver medals to recognize outstanding mathematicians of ethnic Chinese worldwide.