On May 26, UNESCO officially announced the five international laureates of the 2025 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards, recognizing their pioneering contributions to physical sciences, mathematics, and computer science. Among them is Professor Wang Xiaoyun, who holds the Chen-Ning Yang Professorship at Tsinghua’s Institute for Advanced Study and is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Set up in 1998, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards honor five outstanding women scientists every year from the following five regions of the world: Africa and the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America.
Wang Xiaoyun, second from right, talks with her students.
Wang is rewarded for her significant contribution to cryptography and cryptographic mathematics, critical for secure data communication and storage, according to the UNESCO announcement.
Her breakthrough work showed essential flaws in hash functions, which are widely used in communication protocols and led to the invention of the new hash function standards. Today, these standards are used for bank cards, computer passwords, and e-commerce.
The visibility of her revolutionary work has encouraged many female students to pursue a research career in mathematics and network security.
Wang is the ninth Chinese scientist to receive this award since its inception, and the third Chinese female scientist to be honored in the past four years.
The other four award winners this year are Professor Priscilla Baker from the Department of Chemistry at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa; Professor Claudia Felser, Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Germany; Professor María Teresa Dova from the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Exact Sciences, National University of La Plata in Argentina; and Distinguished Professor Emerita Barbara Finlayson-Pitts from the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine in the United States.
The laureates were selected from a pool of 466 nominees through a rigorous evaluation process conducted by an independent jury. The winning researchers will be honored at a ceremony on June 12 at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.
Editor: Li Han
