Taiwan’s Academia Sinica president and a Yale University professor are due at UC Davis in early March to deliver the R. Bryan Miller and Edwin Lemert lectures.

The Miller lecture, on chemistry, is scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday, March 4, while the Lemert lecture, on sociology, is set for 4 p.m. Monday, March 7.

R. Bryan Miller Symposium

This annual event honors chemistry professor R. Bryan Miller, who died in 1998. He was chair of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate at the time of his death. The symposium focuses on pharmaceutical and biological chemistry, and includes speakers from both academia and industry.

Chi-Huey Wong, president of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan's equivalent of the United States’ national academies and laboratories, is scheduled to give the plenary address: “New Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry.”

Wong’s visit comes amid a growing relationship between UC Davis and the Academia Sinica, a high-profile institution. Wong’s predecessor as Academia Sinica president, Yuan T. Lee, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus, shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1986 — becoming the first native Taiwanese to win a Nobel.

A group of UC Davis undergraduates and professors is due to spend this spring quarter at the Taiwanese institute, studying pharmaceutical chemistry.

Wong is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science and is also professor of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute and National Taiwan University. He was appointed to head Academia Sinica in 2006.

"He's very interested in our pharmaceutical chemistry program," said Winston Ko, dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, “as one of the mandates of his presidency is to build up the island nation's biotechnology industry.”

As well as attending the symposium, Wong is scheduled to meet with researchers at the UC Davis Health System and Cancer Center. A reception at the Chancellor's Residence is planned.

The Academia Sinica comprises 24 institutes and seven research centers dealing with the physical sciences, biology and humanities, and gets funding directly from Taiwan’s president.

Wong’s talk: 4 p.m. Friday, March 4, at the Conference Center, at the campus’s south entry. Admission is free and open to the public.

Registration is required to attend the entire symposium, Thursday and Friday, March 3 and 4.