The Future Science Prize, as China’s first-ever non-governmental science awards, will announce its 2017 laureates in life sciences, physical sciences, and mathematics and computer science on Saturday in Beijing, Thepaper.cn reported on Sept. 6.

After a selection process lasting several months, the scientists will each be awarded $1 million for their individual scientific discoveries made in China.

The prize was launched in 2016. In order to ensure the credibility of the awards, selected candidates must be an individual or a team, Chinese or foreign, and they should do their research work in China, including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Their research must also be original and have long-term significance and international influence.

The winners have to go through rounds of procedures, including nomination, professional appraisals, reviews from international experts, and a secret ballot from the judging panel, so many regarded this as the Chinese version of the Nobel Prize.

The prizes are donated by entrepreneurs from 12 listed companies, including Pony Ma, founder and CEO of Tencent, William Ding, CEO of NetEase, and Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu, who all promised to sponsor the prize for 10 years.

Qikun Xue, a professor at Tsinghua University, won the inaugural physical science prize due to his ground-breaking work in novel quantum phenomena using molecule beam epitaxy.

Yuk-Ming Dennis Lo, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, won the life science prize in 2016 for his discovery of the release of fetal DNA into the plasma of a pregnant woman, which has opened up a new approach of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis.