On the occasion of China's Youth Day (May 4), the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China and the All-China Youth Federation conferred the 2026 China Youth May Fourth Medal & New Era Youth Pioneer Award to recognize outstanding young people from all ethnic groups and walks of life. Li Hongbo, 2024 graduate of the Sino-Dutch joint PhD program at our institute, was awarded the China Youth May Fourth Medal.

From 2020 to 2024, Li Hongbo pursued his doctoral studies in the joint program jointly launched by GSCAAS and Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. His supervisors are Academician Huang Sanwen from CAAS and Professor Richard Visser, Academician of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. During his doctoral studies, he published 7 papers in top-tier international journals including Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications and SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences, as first author, corresponding author and co-author. He currently serves as Distinguished Professor at Shandong Agricultural University.

Bearing in mind President Xi Jinping's earnest instruction that "holding Chinese seeds firmly in our own hands". Li Hongbo has dedicated himself to technological innovation in crop genomic breeding. He developed an innovative annotation method for plant disease-resistant genes featuring high precision and wide coverage, laying a solid technical foundation for the systematic identification and targeted application of crop disease-resistant genes. His achievements fully demonstrate the remarkable outcomes of the talent cultivation achievements of our Sino-Dutch program. Moving forward, GSCAAS will further leverage the strengths of Sino-foreign cooperative education, deepen strategic cooperation with world-class universities and research institutions, scale up proven cooperation models, and cultivate more high-caliber talents in agricultural science and technology with global vision as well as a strong sense of patriotism. We will contribute youthful efforts to safeguarding national food security and revitalizing the seed industry.