Recently, the National Natural Science Foundation of China has released the evaluation results of the projects applied for the National Natural Science Fund. With a total sum of 159.998 million yuan for the 333 projects form Soochow University, the number of funded projects has achieved a new record, which puts the university in the 17th place among universities in China, the 2nd in Jiangsu Province, and 1st among local universities.

Numbers and Varieties of the projects funded: four projects by the National Natural Science Funds for Excellent Young Scholar, one Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, three State Key Programs of National Natural Science Foundation of China, 187 Surface Projectsof National Natural Science Foundation of China, 134 projects by the National Natural Science Funds for Young Scholar, 2 projects by theJoint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese, Hong Kong and Macao Young Scholars (one for continuous support), 2 Projects of International (Regional) Cooperation and Exchanges NSFC, and one project by the National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar. Some other varieties are still in the process of evaluation.

In recent years, the leading group of Soochow University has attached great importance to the works regarding science and technology, and asked the teaching faculty to follow the principles of "Understanding, Confidence, Application and Opportunity" when applying for the support from the National Natural Science Foundation. Under new circumstances, the center of the fund-application services has been changed. Led by Deputy Secretary & Vice President Lu Jianmei, the directors and relevant staff of all the offices under the Department of Science and Technology Research have organized special promotion meeting separately for faculty in fields of natural sciences, engineering, medical studies and affiliated hospitals, and encourage the attendees to apply for the NSFC. With elaborate organizations and concrete efforts, relevant units have invited many experts to share their experiences with new applicant, answer the questions the met during the process of application and trigger their passions by correcting and polishing their application forms.

With the unremitting endeavors from our teaching faculty, the number of projects funded by the NSFC always maintains high in the past years. Listed among the top 20 institutes for six consecutive years, Soochow University proves its overall competence in the basic and practical studies on natural sciences and its great atmosphere for scientific researches.