In memory of Prof. Dali Guo—New phytologist
Dali Guo obituary — Journal of Ecology
Prof. Dali Guo passed away on the 19th November 2017.
Dali was born in Gansu province, China, on March 6th, 1971.
He started his academic career at Nanjing Agricultural University, where he gained a degree in Soil and Agricultural Chemistry in 1992.
He got to master in forest soil science in the Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 1997 he left China for the US to complete his PhD in Forest Ecology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
In 2002, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center under the guidance of Dr. Robert Mitchell.
In 2004, Dali joined the Department of Ecology, College of Environmental Sciences, Peking University, and quickly promoted to associate professor.
In 2011, he joined in Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences as a full professor.
In 2013, he was acknowledged as a Distinguished Young Scholar fellow by the Natural Science Foundation of China.
He had an extraordinary enthusiasm for exploring plant roots. 
He helped establish the importance of root branching order on root function, synthesize evolutionary patterns of root traits and addressed how root traits shift with changes in the environment.
His work also extended to link roots and mycorrhizal fungi more broadly to leaf traits and whole plants.
For the past decade, he worked to establish a network of research investigators exploring plant and root ecology across China, taking particular advantage of the numerous research stations of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) that capture the diverse landscapes and flora of China.
Dali was an active collaborator and leader in the scientific community. He organized a number of national symposiums on root ecology.
He was as an associate editor of Journal of Ecology since 2010. He was also a member of the Advisory board of New Phytologist (since 2011), and served on the advisory boards of Global Change Biology(2011-2014) and Chinese Journal of Plant Ecology (since 2009).
He was a true gentleman to his students and colleagues.
His teaching was always accompanied by rich examples and deep insights, and he always welcomes open discussion in the classroom.
His passion for living a meaningful life has inspired everyone who had come to know him.
His enthusiasm was passed on to his colleagues and collaborators, but also to the many graduate students and young scientists that he trained.
He continued teaching till the last day he can stand up.
He loved reading books, history, scientific fictions, philosophy, and poems.
He cared about his family dearly. Wherever he traveled, however busy he was at work, he had never failed in making a phone call home at least once a day.
With a thought of your smile, we remember yesterday.