The New Cornerstone Science Foundation announced the winners of the 7th Xplorer Prize, honoring 50 outstanding young scientists across China. Professor Du Bo from the School of Computer Science at Wuhan University (WHU) was recognized in the Information and Electronics Category for his contributions to artificial intelligence.

Established in 2018, the Xplorer Prize is a non-profit award jointly initiated by 14 renowned scientists like Nobel laureate C.N. Yang and China’s tech giant Tencent founder Pony Ma.

It is one of the highest-funded programs supporting young scientists in China, with the aim of promoting long-term, stable support for basic research. Covering nine major fields, the prize is limited to no more than 50 recipients annually and has supported 347 scientists to date.

Du, a Hongyi Distinguished Professor at WHU, leads the Hubei Innovation Group on multimodal human-computer interaction and large-model computing. His pioneering work in medical and aerospace AI models has overcome key challenges in adaptability, multi-task transfer, and cross-scenario deployment, with results applied in multiple sectors.

He has published over 100 CCF-A papers, including one in Nature sub-journal, with more than 36,000 citations on Google Scholar. His accolades include the China Youth Science and Technology Award, Hubei Natural Science First Prize, and the IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award. He has also guided student teams who went on to win championships at major international competitions such as the IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest.