Kong Fanhua, who has been a visiting student in our lab for the past two years, recently successfully defended her PhD at her home institution, East China Normal University, where she is advised by He Fangliang. The title of her thesis was “Effects of the competition–colonisation trade-off on species coexistence in forest plant communities”. During her time in our lab, she successfully published a chapter from thesis on neighbourhood diversity of pioneer versus shade-tolerant trees in Baishanzu Nature Reserve in China (see here). She also has in preparation a manuscript about tree diversity in gaps and non-gaps in the Barro Colorado Island forest in Panama. Congratulations, Fanhua!