BEIJING - Andreas Dress believes it won't be long before a person from China is awarded a Nobel Prize for science.

"I am pretty sure Chinese people will get a Nobel Prize for work done in China within the next 10 years," said the 74-year-old German mathematician.

He even has a candidate and specific achievement in mind.

"One person in China who currently deserves a Nobel Prize is Dr Chen Zhu. And there will be others to follow," Dress said.

Chen, who has a doctorate from the Universite Paris 7, has worked with French colleagues such as medical expert Hugues de The and has made outstanding breakthroughs in leukemia therapy.

Dress and Hugues de The are two of the eight foreign recipients of the 2011 International Science and Technology Cooperation Award. They received the top honor at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Feb 14.

Dress is well known in pure mathematics research and numerous application areas. He served as the first managing director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences-Max Planck Gesellschaft Partner Institute for Computational Biology from 2005 to 2010.

Dress learned of Chen Zhu's work on China Central Television's English channel in 2007. That year, Chen was appointed the country's minister of health.

Dress saw that as a step forward for China.