Chinese Academy of Sciences (PDF) - low res version

Research CAS/In Focus
Editorial News Report:
Introducing the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Gigantic skeleton from dinosaur fossils (Institute of
Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology)
CREDIT: PHOTOS BY RICKY WONG
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) defies easy description.
Among other things, the semi-governmental organization’s 110
institutes carry out basic, applied, and translational research in
all fields of science; it builds and maintains “big science” facilities
for use by all of the country’s researchers; it runs a graduate school and a
university; it generates reports to advise policymakers; and it selects members,
an elite group considered to be the best scientists in China.
CAS was officially founded just one month after the establishment of the
People’s Republic of China, in 1949. “It was very clear to the Chinese leadership
at the time that if you want to have a sustainable economy, you need
to rely on science and technology,” says Lü Yonglong, director-general of
CAS’s Bureau of International Cooperation. Since then, CAS has taken on a
staggering array of roles. Originally tasked with coordinating all of the country’s
research activities, as well as providing science-based advice to the
government, CAS lost some of its authority to the new Ministry of Science
and Technology in 1958. Further marginalized during the Cultural Revolution
of the 1960s and '70s, when intellectuals were distrusted and universities
shut down, CAS began to recover in the late '70s along with the rest of
the country. Various steps were taken to reform the research system, but its
true renaissance began in 1998 with the advent of the so-called Knowledge
Innovation Program (KIP), which aimed to boost innovation in China by
remaking CAS. At that time, “the institutes had to reorient themselves, and
reevaluate staff,” Lü explains.
The upheaval was dramatic. Some of CAS’s 120 institutes were shut
down or merged with others, while most downsized their staff and faculty.
The Academy of Mathematical Sciences, for example, demoted or laid off
100 of its 160 full professors. In Shanghai, eight biological institutes merged
to form the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), modeled on
the U.S. National Institutes of Health. “One of the advantages of this new
organization is that we can reform and reorganize these institutes according
to the progress of science,” says Chen Xiaoya, the current president of
SIBS. Some of the eight institutes were merged or eliminated, while new
ones have sprung up under KIP, including the Institute of Neuroscience,
the Chinese Academy of Sciences-Max Planck Society Partner Institute for
Computational Biology (PICB), and the Shanghai Pasteur Institute. Today’s
SIBS institutes are “working on the cutting edge of research,” or serving
society with a broader mandate, Chen says.
Ph.D. students and technicians work on
water extraction from plant and soil samples
(Institute of Geographic Sciences and
Natural Resources Research)
But CAS’s three major functions—
research, education, and consultation—
have remained unchanged.
Research
China’s central government charges CAS
with “playing a key role in leading China’s
research, especially in the frontiers of science,”
says Lü. Since KIP began, research
programs have been increasingly oriented
toward internationally popular frontier areas,
such as neuroscience, while also
continuing to cover areas of
particular interest to China,
such as developing new energy
sources and partnering
with domestic industries.
As it strives to conduct
world-class research, CAS
has increasingly pursued
international collaborations,
as well as aggressively recruiting
Chinese scientists
who have worked or studied
abroad (see page 36, “Attracting
Top Talent”), and
emphasizing publication in
international peer-reviewed
Lü Yonglong
journals when evaluating
staff and faculty. For example,
at SIBS’s Institute of
Neuroscience, Director Poo
Mu-ming (who also serves
as a professor of neurobiology
at the University of
California, Berkeley) has put
in place a rigorous system
Poo Mu-ming
Internal view of the Shanghai
Synchrotron Radiation Facility
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