Artist's impression of the research center

A launch meeting was held on October 21 to kick off the construction of an interdisciplinary research platform for brain cognitive mechanisms and brain-machine interfaces in Huairou district, Beijing.

The project is being undertaken by the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the CAS Institute of Automation and Huairou Science City Ltd, and co-built by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Xuanwu Hospital and Chinese PLA General Hospital.

With a construction area of 30,500 square meters, the project includes six research platforms covering human brain cognitive functions, brain cognitive molecular neural mechanisms, the brainnetome atlas, brain research through animal models, brain science and technology innovation, and intelligent brain-machine interfaces.

The project will provide cutting-edge technologies for brain science research from molecular level upwards, and serve basic and clinical application research in brain science. It is designed to be a world-class research platform for brain and cognitive science.

The project, once completed, will work with science and education infrastructure - part of the 13th Five-Year Plan - and an interdisciplinary research center for brainnetome and brain-inspired intelligence, to promote the progress of brain science and artificial intelligence.

It will also inject an impetus into major national strategies such as the China Brain Project (entitled "Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence") and Artificial Intelligence 2.0, and provide technologies for the innovation and industrialization of brain and intelligence research methodology.