16th September, the award ceremony of the European Prize for Innovation in Fusion (SOFT Innovation Prize) was solemnly held in Sicily, Italy.

Patrick Child, the director for Energy Research of European Commission, awarded the Chinese Scientist WU Yican this prize, for his pioneering contribution to the frontier domains of neutron physics in nuclear energy. Prof. WU Yican is the first Chinese winner of this prize and also the first Asian winner.

The European Prize for Innovation in Fusion was launched by European Commission in 2014 within the biggest research and innovation programme Horizon 2020 and awarded every two years. The objective of the prize is to reward outstanding researchers or industries in the world who try to find new solutions, possibly with wider applications, to the huge challenges of fusion.

Neutronics is the key issue of nuclear energy systems. Prof. WU Yican is a world famous scientist on nuclear energy neutronics. He has been devoting himself to the research of neutron physics in nuclear energy for more than 30 years and made significant breakthrough on the development of methodology and key technology. SuperMC, the Super Multi-functional Calculation Program for Nuclear Design and Safety Evaluation has been developed, which overcomes the challenges of accurate modeling and calculation of complex nuclear systems. This program has become a very important tool in this field, and has been large-scale applied in more than 60 nations as well as 30 mega nuclear engineering projects such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER.