Recently, after a rigorous review and voting process by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (IMA-CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association, another new mineral from China, named Qiumingite, has been officially approved. The new mineral carries the number IMA 2025-008. It is named in honor of Professor Qiuming Cheng, Chair of DDE Executive Committee, renowned Chinese mathematical geoscientist and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to recognize and celebrate his outstanding contributions to the field of Earth sciences. Research and the application for the new mineral were jointly conducted by Dr. Ningyue Sun, Dr. Yuan Xue from the team of Professor Guowu Li at the School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), together with Fabrizio Nestola, an Academician of the Italian National Academy of Sciences at the University of Padova.

Qiumingite is a complex phosphate mineral belonging to the Dugganite Group, with the ideal chemical formula Pb₃(Zn₂Fe³⁺)Sb⁵⁺P₂O₁₄. It occurs in the oxidation zone of the Dongchuan copper belt in Yunnan Province, China, and is a supergene mineral. Qiumingite is the seventh new mineral discovered in the Dongchuan copper belt of Yunnan Province. All seven new minerals were structurally characterized and named through research conducted by Professor Guowu Li's team at the X-ray Diffraction Crystal Structure Laboratory of China University of Geosciences (Beijing).

The study of new minerals in the Dongchuan area began in 1980, when Professor Zheseng Ma, then director of the laboratory, first discovered a new mineral called "monoclinic cupropophyllite" in the region (later officially named Cupropophyllite in 2014). Since then, Professor Guowu Li's research team has discovered four new Dongchuanite-group minerals and a new mineral named Cuihaiite between 2021 and 2022. They also developed a classification and nomenclature scheme for the Dongchuanite group, which became the first mineral group classification system from China to receive international approval. With the discovery of Qiumingite in 2025, the Mineral Crystal Structure Laboratory at China University of Geosciences (Beijing) has completed a series of discoveries and crystal structure studies of new minerals in Dongchuan. This achievement reflects over forty years of continuous research accumulation and legacy in the fields of new mineral exploration, crystal structure analysis, and crystal chemistry, making outstanding contributions to new mineral research in China.

The discovery of new minerals and the study of their internal crystal structures involve extensive and meticulous research work, including screening of numerous mineral samples, compositional analysis, diffraction data collection, and structural model determination. Qiumingite exhibits a structurally more complex substitution mechanism than other similar minerals or artificial synthetic compounds, providing a valuable example for understanding valence regulation and ore-forming conditions in supergene phosphate minerals. Similar high-temperature synthetic materials have already shown nonlinear optical properties in materials science. The existence of this natural supergene sample indicates that such structurally complex materials can also form and grow under lower-temperature hydrothermal conditions, offering significant potential for applications in materials science and functional crystal research.

Born in March 1960 in Taigu, Shanxi Province. Qiuming is a renowned mathematical geoscientist and economic geologist, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea, one of the first ISC Fellows of the International Science Council, a professor at China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Director of the State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, and Chief Scientist/Director of the Frontier Science Center for Deep-Time Digital Earth under the China Ministry of Education. In April 2025, Qiuming was officially elected as the Chair of DDE Executive Committee.

Qiuming is an internationally recognized leader in the field of mathematical geoscience and Earth sciences. He has long been dedicated to the study of nonlinear geological processes and mineral resource exploration, and his work has had a profound international impact. Through pioneering scientific research and extensive teaching experience, he has achieved a series of important results in areas such as nonlinear characteristics of mineral microstructures and morphology, mineral formation mechanisms, and elemental substitution processes.

Discoverers of the new mineral: Ningyue Sun, Yuan Xue, Guowu Li*, Fabrizio Nestola, Jin Hua Hao, Hongtao Shen, and Chang Li.
The abstract of the new mineral was recently published in the European Journal of Mineralogy:
Sun, N., Xue, Y., Li, G., Nestola, F., Hao, J., Shen, H., and Li, C. (2025) Qiumingite, IMA 2025-008. CNMNC Newsletter 86, Eur. J. Mineral., 37.