The Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) is a comprehensive research base dedicated to the research and development of computer science theories and leading-edge software technologies. It was founded on March 1st, 1985 and is situated at No.4, South 4th Street, Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing.
Initially, the five founder members conducted their research in the borrowed offices with two 16-bit microcomputers and the annual research funding was only 44 thousand RMB. Through the collective efforts of all staffs, ISCAS has made significant progress in past decades. Today, it owns three research building. More than 2,000 faculty, staff and students are working and studying here. The annual research funding has risen to nearly 1 billion RMB.
ISCAS has already established three scientific research systems: the basic research system in leading-edge areas, the high technology research system, and the application research system, which are led by several state key laboratories and national engineering research centers. Engaged in the fields of computer science, computer software and computer application technology, etc., ISCAS is composed of Basic Research Department, Hi-Tech Research Department, Applied Research Department, Software Development Division as well as General Department. And while much has changed, its commitment of being “Innovative, Pragmatic and Competitive” remains constant.
ISCAS also brings together a number of celebrated scientists and young talents with strong research capabilities. So far, there are 1390 employees, including 4 academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 academician of the World Academy of Sciences, 84 academic staffs with senior professional titles, and 195 academic staffs with vice-senior professional titles. Among them, 3 persons obtained the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and 5 persons won the Excellent Young Scientists Fund.
ISCAS is authorized to grant PhD and Master’s degrees in four primary disciplines: Computer Science & Technology, Software Engineering, Cyberspace Security and Electronic Information. Significantly, ISCAS is one of the pilot institutes of engineering doctoral education in Electronic Information. Besides, it has two post-doctoral mobile stations for Computer Science & Technology and Software Engineering. At present, there are 387 graduate students, 279 enrolled PhD candidates and 35 post-doctoral research fellows.
ISCAS has been actively carrying out academic exchanges and has established cooperative relationship with a number of institutes and universities from more than 40 countries and regions. It also cooperates with a host of provincial/municipal governments in China.
Three organizations are affiliated to ISCAS. They are Chinese Information Processing Society of China, Technical Committee on Cryptologic Algorithms of Chinese Association for Cryptologic Research, and Energy Intelligentization Technical Committee of China Electrotechnical Society. Also, ISCAS sponsors four academic journals, namely Journal of Software, Journal of Chinese Information Processing, Computer Systems & Applications, and International Journal of Software and Informatics.
Over the past 4 decades, since its establishment, ISCAS has achieved fruitful results in the fields of computer science and software technology. It has won 47 achievement awards at or above ministry (province) level (only the first affiliation to complete the statistics), including the State Natural Science Award (1 first prize, 2 second prizes and 1 third prize), and the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award (9 second prizes and 2 third prizes). It is worth mentioning that when the first State Natural Science Award was issued, ISCAS took the first prize of the award.
（Updated: December 2024)