Recently, the Committee of Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) announced the evaluation results of NSFC projects and our Prof. Li Guojun was funded for the project "Research on Algorithms of Biological Data and Network Data Mining Based on Graph and Combination Optimization" with the direct outlay of RMB2.7 million.

The research of this project focuses on bioinformatics. Its main research contents include the assembly of epigenomics data, the biclustering analysis of gene expression data, the screening of combinatorial drugs, and the construction of functional brain network. The research of Prof. Li in the fields of graph theory, combinatorial optimization and bioinformatics has attracted wide attention from peers at home and abroad. It proved four graph theory conjectures or puzzles represented by Chvátal conjecture; ended a long debate on several approximation issues; refreshed several classical algorithms in the field of bioinformatics.

Founded by the Committee of NSFC, the Key Science Foundation Project aims to support scientific and technological personnel engaged in basic research to carry out in-depth and systematic innovative research in the research direction or disciplinary growth point with better foundation, promote the development of disciplines, and push forward breakthroughs in several important fields or scientific frontiers. This Foundation is one of the high-level projects set up by the Committee of NSFC, and also an important indicator to measure the academic and scientific research level of a school. Over the years, NSFC has attracted much attention from universities and research institutes.

We have been attaching great importance to scientific research, constantly improving research management and incentive policies, and strengthened the construction of academic innovation team for personnel training. In recent years, our NSFC has maintained a good development status in terms of the number of projects and the amount of funds. That Prof. Li received this fund plays an important role in promoting the development of our research on mathematics and interdisciplinary science.

Winner profile:

Li Guojun is currently a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Mathematics, Shandong University and the Center of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Science Research. In 2005, he was appointed as a special professor of "Taishan Scholar" in Shandong Province, and in 2006, he was appointed as a senior research professor at the University of Georgia in the United States. He has presided over 13 projects of NSFC, including 2 key projects of NSFC, and participated in 1 project of NSFC. He has published several academic papers as the leading author in two top journals of Graphs and Combinatorics (Journal of Combinatorial Theory B, Combinatorica) and three top journals of Combinatorial Optimization/Computer Science (SIAM J Comput., ACM Trans on Algorithms, Algorithmica) and published more than 30 academic papers as the No.1 or communication author in top professional journals related to bioinformatics (Genome Biology, Nucleic Acids Research, Bioinformatics, etc.), of which 11 papers have more than 11 impact factors.