Jianfeng Feng is the chair professor of Shanghai National Centre for Mathematic Sciences, the Dean of Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intellignece, and the Dean of School of Data Science in Fudan University. He has been developing new mathematical, statistical and computational theories and methods to meet the challenges raised in neuroscience and mental health researches. Recently, his research interests are mainly in big data analysis and mining for neuroscience and brain diseases. He was awarded the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2011, as a scientist ‘being of great achievements or potentials’. He has made considerable contributions on modelling single neurons and neuronal networks, machine learning, and causality analysis with publications on Nature series journals, Science sries journals, JAMA Psychiatry, AJP, Biological Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry, Brain, PNAS, PRL, and top machine learning journals IEEE TPAMI. He has proposed and developed causality anayses, and successfully applied them to search the roots in depression, schizophrenia and autism; developed functional entropy method and applied it to the study of ageing, intelligence and creativity, etc.