Pope Francis has appointed Taiwan’s former vice president and renowned epidemiologist Chen Chien-jen as an ordinary member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Professor Chen, 70, a Catholic, is a lecturer in epidemiology at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan’s capital city Taipei. He is considered a major driving force behind Taiwan’s relative success in battling the Covid-19 pandemic.
His appointment to the prestigious Vatican academy was announced by the Holy See press office on July 30. He is the second Taiwanese after Nobel Prize laureate chemist Lee Yuan-tseh to become a member of the academy.
He served as Taiwan’s health minister from 2003-05, minister of the National Science Council from 2006-08 and as vice president from 2016-20. Besides his role at Academia Sinica, he also served as its vice president from 2011-15, the Vatican bulletin noted.
Chen has taught and conducted research in the fields of epidemiology, preventive medicine, public health and human genetics.
Transparency and openness are very important for the containment of infectious diseases
He was also a member of the board of trustees of Taiwan’s renowned Fu Jen Catholic University before joining the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of President Tsai Ing-wen.
As an epidemiologist and health minister, he came to global prominence for his seminal role in containing the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003.
In an interview with Al Jazeera in January, Chen said the coronavirus pandemic could have been stopped if Chinese authorities had notified the World Health Organization (WHO) when the virus was first detected in Wuhan in December 2019 and allowed an expert team to investigate.
“Transparency and openness are very important for the containment of infectious diseases,” Chen told Al Jazeera.
Professor Chen Chien-jen meets Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2018. Chen has been appointed as a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. (Photo courtesy of the Embassy of Taiwan to the Holy See)
(published by https://www.ucanews.com/news/former-taiwan-vice-president-joins-pontifical-academy-of-sciences/93530#)
