On the afternoon of September 28th, the ceremony of Chinese Government Friendship Award was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The visiting professor of Lanzhou University Neil Clifford Turner won the award. On the afternoon of 29th, the State Council premier Wen Jiabao met with foreign experts who won the award and their relatives in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Professor Neil Clifford Turner is an international famous experts in the field of Dry Farming, academician of Australia Technology and Engineering Research Institute, Winthrop professor of the University of Western Australia, visiting professor of Lanzhou University, and one academic master of "Dry & Cold Ecology" in the innovation engineering base by the Ministry of Education/State Foreign Expert Bureau. He mainly engaged in the research of dry-land agriculture water resources management and crop physiological ecology, especially for such researches as the response of water deficit Agronomy and Physiology, the adaptability of crop in moisture-restricted environment, the influence of climate change on farming system, etc. Professor Turner has been implementing a series of fruitful researches with partners from Lanzhou University in some state-sponsored key fields such as arid agricultural ecology, crop water saving cultivation and the sustainable development of the arid regions in northwestern China, and doing remarkable performance in the national key disciplines in ecology in terms of teaching, scientific research and personnel training, which is real pioneering contribution to reduce the existing gap between home and abroad in dry land agriculture ecology field, and to broaden and deepen international cooperation and exchange for Lanzhou University. He used to won the "Dunhuang Award" for the outstanding foreign experts organized by the people's government of Gansu Province in 2011.
It is reported Chinese Government Friendship Award was set in 1991 by Chinese government as the highest honor award to grant foreign experts working in China. Since its inception, a total of 1,249 foreign experts from 65 countries have won the award. The foreign experts who won the award this year are from 22 countries, and their study are concerned with the field of industry, agriculture, energy and environmental protection, educational science and technology, medical and health, culture, sports and others.
