Peng Jian, WHU alumnus and Computer Science Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, was conferred the 2016 Sloan Fellowship along with 16 other scholars of Chinese descent. He is the only winner in computational and evolutionary molecular biology.

Peng Jian entered Wuhan University in 2001 and obtained his Bachelor and Master’s degree. He then moves on to pursue his doctorate at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago and post-doctorate research at MIT, Math Department. Currently a peer reviewer of PNAS and IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Peng Jian has at least spearheaded six major research projects. His research results were mainly published on authoritative academic conferences of Machine Learning and Computational Biology including ICML, NIPS and UAI, and on academic journals such as Nature Biotech, Science and Cell.

Much admired by his peers as a Straight-A overachiever, Peng Jian is just one of the many reserved geek who spends long hours coding away in libraries and labs. He was obsessed with maths and computer theories and was urged by his graduate supervisor, Professor Wu Guoqing, to use his knowledge in an applied project. The encouraging feedback Peng Jian received for the project opened a window for his ensuing application to Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago.

Another rewarding experience for Peng Jian was that his team claimed silver in ACM/ICPC as a sophomore. It was WHU’s first win in the competition. Following their trodden path, WHU students have been participating in the competition and coming back with medals every year. Peng Jian stayed on as the technical consultant and assistant coach for the WHU team.

“Peng Jian’s most glaring attribute is modesty,” said Chen Ming, Peng Jian’s younger school fellow. Peng Jian’s diffidence in day-to-day discussions stands in stark contrast with his eloquence in academic discourse.

“Another feature of Peng is his ability to plan ahead,” said another student. Entering the lab, mentoring students, spending time with family and working out at the same time every single day is a rigid biological clock that characterizes many eminent men and women.

The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". Since the beginning of the program in 1955, 43 fellows have won the Nobel Prize, and 16 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics.

(Rewritten by Yinglun Liu, edited by Sijia Hu)