Hua Zhu is a researcher at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He graduated from the Forestry Department of Beijing Forestry University in 1982. He obtained his master’s degree from Sun Yat-sen University in 1987 and his PhD degree from Kunming Institute of Botany in 1991. He was employed as a visiting professor at the Netherlands National Herbarium and Leiden University in the Netherlands from 2001 to 2002.  He won the “Fang Shuquan” Young Scientist Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995, and won the Advanced Individual Award for Field Work of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1997. He obtained “Hundred Talents Program” of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1998. He is a botanist, and his research areas focus on floristic geography, vegetation and community ecology of the tropical, subtropical regions in China.