Prof. J. B. Xu has recently been selected as Member of International Advisory Committee of International Conference on Nanoscience and Technology, China 2009 (ChinaNano 2009). The conference is presumably the largest one on nanoscience and nanotechnology in the Greater China and Asia. The Conference Chairman is Prof. Chunli Bai, Executive Vice President of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The extraordinarily high level of current international funding in nanoscience and nanotechnology explicitly manifests its perceived importance for a whole range of technologies in the coming 20 years or so. The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to two discovers of GMR also ascertains this importance. GMR is now widely used in PC hard disks for achieving ultra-high density of data storage. The discovery is considered as one of the first real applications of the promising field of nanotechnology, as announced by the Nobel Prize Committee.