By MAO CHANGJIU

By the West Lake, in Hangzhou Silicon Valley, the dream of building a world-class private university is under realization.

Recently, the predecessor of the West Lake University (Planned), Zhejiang West Lake Institute for Advanced Study (hereinafter referred to as WIAS) was established in Hangzhou. It is currently the country’s first high-end private research institute that starts from doctoral programs.

WIAS is located in the Cloud town of the West Lake District, with a total construction area of about 100,000 square meters.

The Institute is led by the experts and the top talents elected by the national “Top Thousand Talents” program and is to set up four research institutes in the fields of science, cutting-edge technology, basic medicine and biology to carry out scientific research and doctoral programs.

The well-known biophysicist, the vice president of Tsinghua University, Shi Yigong, was elected to be the first president of WIAS. Mr. Shi Yigong, Mr. Pan Jianwei, the executive vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China, Mr. Chen Shiyi, the president of Southern University of Science and Technology, and Mr. Rao Yi, the deputy director of the School Council of Peking University, will take charge of the above-mentioned four research institutes.

At present, the administrative office building decoration has been finished. The four research buildings still under decoration will have about 130 independent laboratories, two student dorms and a supporting cafeteria to meet the eating and living demand of more than 500 graduate students.

Since its birth, WIAS is targeted at building a world-class high-end research institution.

Inspired by the size and the educational philosophy of the University of California and the Stanford University, WIAS starts from recruiting the world’s top scientists as its faculty.

At present, WIAS has recruited two times from all over the world a number of outstanding academic talents at home and abroad. It is expected that with the 200 professors and nearly 2,000 researchers, WIAS will strive to build a word-class scientific research institution.

At the inaugural meeting, each of the teams led by Shi Yigong, Chen Shiyi, Pan Jianwei, and Rao Yi, received a 100 million yuan starting fund supplied by the city for recruiting the first-class talents and for carrying out the cutting-edge scientific researches.

Hangzhou officials said that the preparation and establishment of WIAS would hopefully attract high-end talents to Hangzhou, would play a key role in enabling the top talents and top teams to proliferate Hangzhou’s information economy development, and would speed up the construction of the national innovation demonstration zone.