In 2008, with approval of the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC), the number of projects granted at IHB was 27 in total, among which 5 were Projects for Young Scientists Fund, 18 were General Projects, 1 was project for the Distinguished Young Scholars of the NSFC, 2 were Key Projects, 1 was the NSFC-Yunnan Joint Funds.  

The funding rate at IHB was 38%, with a total project budget of 13.33 million RMB Yuan (about 2 million USD). Among these programmes, 20 are related to the Department of Life Sciences, 3 are related to the Department of Chemical Sciences, 3 are related to the Department of Earth Sciences, and 1 is related to the Department of Engineering and Material Sciences, showing the good momentum of the fundamental researches in the institute.  

Prof. Xudong XU was awarded the Distinguished Young Scholars (life sciences) by the NSFC, and thus became the seventh awardee at IHB. Prof. Xu’s research group has made a series of significant progresses in the research field of differentiation of cyanobacteria cells and mechanism of overwintering molecule.  

Prof. Zhongjie LI and Dr. Mingxian CHANG separately obtained the Key Project from the Department of Life Sciences. Prof. Li’s projects will focus on the multiplication of fishes and mitten crabs in lakes, and will give explanations to the functional role of artificial stocking played in lake ecosystem.  

Dr. Chang’s project will explain the structural and expressional characteristics of fish pattern recognition receptors family, and reveal the role that fish pattern recognition receptors played in the signal transduction pathway and in immune response.  

Prof. Lirong SONG obtained the NSFC-Yunnan Joint Fund Project. The project will give a systematic analysis of the driving mechanism and temporal and spatial variation of cyanobacteria water bloom in the Dianchi Lake. The project also proposes the technical principles and solutions to the prevention and control of cyanobacteria water bloom in the Dianchi Lake.  

The newly obtained projects from the NSFC are closely related to water environmental protection and sustainable fishery development. The features that these projects display are as follows: 1. the number of these projects and the total project budgets have obviously risen; 2. the proportion of fundamental research projects that are conducted by young scholars is promoted; 3. the cooperation with universities and research institutes is gradually enhanced.