Wen-Jun Li received his PhD in microbiology from Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is currently working as Distinguished Professor in School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China. His research mainly focuses on microbial diversity under those unusual environments, by using culture-dependent and culture-independent methods, as well as mechanisms of extremophilic microbes to adapt those unusual environments. He was awarded the WFCC (The World Federation for Culture Collections) Skerman award for microbial taxonomy in 2007, and other six provincial and ministry level awards for his outstanding research contributions on the field of microbial systematics and microbial ecology. He has successfully trained more than 150 graduate students and postdoc level students in the field of microbial taxonomy and microbial ecology at home and abroad countries.