On December 16, 2022, the Chen Jia Geng Science Foundation announced the winners of this year's Chen Jia Geng Science Award and Chen Jia Geng Young Scientist Award in Beijing. The achievement titled "Modeling Theory, Methods, and Applications for Software Architecture in Internetware" by Academician Mei Hong and Professor Huang Gang from Peking University's School of Computer Science received the Information Technology Science Award of the Chen Jia Geng Science Award for the year.
Starting from the 1990s, as the Internet evolved into a globally pervasive computing platform, it posed comprehensive challenges to software theory, methods, and technologies. The open, dynamic, and uncontrollable characteristics of Internet platforms required corresponding changes in software's fundamental forms, behavioral characteristics, development methods, operational mechanisms, and quality assurance. Chinese scholars took the lead in systematically examining and researching Internet computing from a software technology perspective, proposing the software paradigm for Internet computing, known as "Internetware," in 2000.
Under the leadership of Mei Hong and Huang Gang, their team conducted over a decade of research and practice, revealing the multi-level complexity relationships in the high-level structure of Internetware systems. They introduced the concept of "Software Architecture (SA)" and its modeling theory and "Architecture Based component Composition (ABC)" method, unifying core products and activities in various stages of the software life cycle into SA models and their iterative refinement and transformation. This significantly enhanced software development and evolution efficiency and quality. They also delved into the runtime architecture mechanisms and properties of Internetware systems, introducing the concept of "Runtime Software Architecture (RSA)," extending SA from the development stage to the operational stage, and establishing Internetware RSA construction and evolution methods based on model bidirectional transformation and code generation. They uncovered the reverse traceability properties between system design, implementation, and operation, proposing SA model recovery methods based on program analysis, documentation, and runtime data analysis. They invented client-driven SA resource reflection methods and mechanisms to support reverse understanding and reconstruction of system RSA while monitoring and controlling it in real-time. They developed human-computer collaborative automation methods for generating interoperable interfaces, achieving a code generation rate exceeding 95%. They implemented various automated generation and operational services for common information silo business data and functions, with an average efficiency improvement of two orders of magnitude, disrupting the traditional "white-box" approach to interoperability technology. The developed system platforms and tools have been widely applied in several major projects and tasks of China's national big data strategy, and the related technologies have entered digital object architecture standards. As an academic concept proposed by Chinese scholars, Internetware has become an important part of Internet computing research and has had a significant impact on the international academic community.
The Chen Jia Geng Science Award, formerly established in 1988 as the Chen Jia Geng Award, currently comprises six categories: Mathematical and Physical Sciences Award, Chemistry Sciences Award, Life Sciences Award, Earth Sciences Award, Information Technology Sciences Award, and Technological Sciences Award. It is awarded every two years, with one recipient per category, and there can be no more than three recipients per category. If there are no suitable projects, the award can be left vacant. Since its establishment in 1988, the Chen Jia Geng Award has organized eight award evaluations and presentations, with a total of 63 outstanding Chinese scientists receiving this honor. Scientists who have received the highest national science and technology awards, such as Wu Wenjun, Wang Xuan, Huang Kun, Liu Dongsheng, Wu Mengchao, Ye Duzheng, Li Zhensheng, and Zhang Cunhao, have all previously been recipients of the Chen Jia Geng Award. The Chen Jia Geng Science Foundation aims to reward original achievements and actively contribute to enhancing China's scientific and technological innovation capabilities, advocating rigorous academic practices, and inspiring the enthusiasm of scientists for technological innovation, making contributions to the construction of an innovative country.
