Nobel chemistry laureate Arieh Warshel receives Taiwan Employment Gold Card

Taiwan has presented an Employment Gold Card to Arieh Warshel, the 2013 Nobel Chemistry laureate, as it seeks to attract more international scientific talent.

National Development Council Minister Kung Ming-hsin presented the card to Warshel. The council called him the first Nobel laureate worldwide to obtain Taiwan's Employment Gold Card as a Nobel Prize winner, describing the award as a milestone in the island's talent recruitment efforts.

Warshel shared the 2013 Nobel Prize with Martin Karplus and Michael Levitt for developing multiscale models of complex chemical systems. In the 1970s, he pioneered methods that combined quantum mechanics with classical mechanics, allowing computers to model reactions in biological molecules such as enzyme catalysis. The work became a foundation for computer-aided drug design, studies of enzyme mechanisms and protein engineering. He is also regarded as a pioneer of computational structural biology.

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Computational chemistry research requires powerful computing and biomedical applications, and Taiwan is a global hub for AI computing and biomedical technology.

Warshel has taught at the University of Southern California since 1976 and is now a distinguished professor there. He is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. This year, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University's International Semiconductor Industry Academy appointed him an honorary chair professor after an invitation from its dean, Chen Kuan-neng.

Taiwan's National Development Council said Warshel has long-standing ties with Taiwan's research community. A former doctoral student he supervised, Huang Chen-kang, later helped establish the graduate institute of bioinformatics at what is now National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Council officials said the partnership would support exchanges in talent training, semiconductors and key technologies. The Gold Card combines work, residence and other permits, allows holders to seek employment, change jobs or start businesses, and can shorten the path to permanent residence for eligible top-level professionals.

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The Taiwan VIP pass