In recent days, the executive Steering Committee of 6th International Cotton Genome Initiative (ICGI) announced a good news that prof.Guoli Song and Xiongming Du in our institute have been successfully elected as the co-chairs of Functional Genomics Workgroup and Gernplasm and Genetic Stocks Workgroup in ICGI respectively. The International Cotton Genome Initiative (ICGI) is a high standard academic conference in international cotton science and technology. It mainly facilitate global academic communication and collaboration of the structure genome， function genome，germplasm and genetic stocks, bioinformatics etc. areas.

The globe internet election for the workgroup co-chairs of the International Cotton Genome Initiative (ICGI) has been held according to the vote procedure and regulation from Feb.13 – March 29, 2015.  Six new co-chairs have been elected.  Co-chair of ICGI overall is Dr.John Yu; Co-chair of Functional Genomics Workgroup is Dr.Guoli Song; Co-chair of Gernplasm and Genetic Stocks Workgroup is Dr.Xiongming Du. Moreover, Dr. Jodi Scheffler, Dr. Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov, Dr.Wangzhen Guo were elected as co-chairs of Breeding and Applied Genomics, Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics Workgroup and Structural Genomics Workgroup respectively .

The success voted as the ICGI co-chairs of prof. Guoli Song and Xiongming Du shows the research area of international cotton genome in our institute has reached the international leading level. And this also provides a new chance to promote continuously our cotton science and technology to join the international competition, to advance the international academic impacts, to accelerate the construction the first-class research institutes in the world.