Recently, the ministry of education issued “The decision on the award of outstanding achievements in scientific research (science and technology) of institutions of higher learning in 2019”, which officially announced the winners of the award of outstanding achievements in scientific research (science and technology) of institutions of higher learning in 2019. “The study of dynamic phase transition on complex networks” was awarded a Second Prize of Science & technology Achievement, which was finished by professors Zonghua Liu, Shuguang Guan, Yong Zou, and Jie Zhou of our school. East China Normal University is the only unit of the award.

The project of studying the dynamic complex networks was started in 2004 by the team, who was one of the earliest teams engaged in the dynamics of complex networks in China. After 12 years of collaboration, the team had made great achievements not only on explosive synchronization and epidemic spreading of complex networks but also served the national major strategic needs. At the same time, the team took two key projects of national science funds.

The results include the finding of one of the two basic frameworks of explosive synchronization, the studying of explosive synchronization by the attraction domain method, the prohibition law of the microscopic mechanism of explosive synchronization, and the adaptive method of explosive synchronization. The team also revealed a new high-order synergy state, presented the first model of epidemic spreading on social network, and studied the diffusion of public opinion from the new angle of different spreading status of neighbors. These findings have attracted considerable attention from international and domestic colleagues in the field of complex networks, and thus they were invited as corresponding authors to write a 94-page review paper for the top review journal of Phys. Rep.

The award of outstanding achievements in scientific research (science and technology) of institutions of higher learning is awarded to institutions of higher learning across the whole country once a year. It is divided into natural science award, technological invention award, scientific and technological progress award and youth science award. It is mainly awarded to individuals and units that have made outstanding contributions to scientific discovery, technological invention and scientific and technological progress.

Figure and text: Jiayuan Zhu

Editor: Huimin Yuan