About Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SARI; Chinese: 中国科学院上海高等研究院) is a multidisciplinary research and education institution in Shanghai. Located in the core area of Zhangjiang Science City in Pudong, it was jointly established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Shanghai Municipal Government. SARI is best known nationally and internationally as the supporting institution for the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) and the National Facility for Protein Science Shanghai, and as the builder of a new generation of photon-science facilities in Zhangjiang. Its official English website is english.sari.cas.cn.

Founding and acceptance in 2012

SARI grew out of the long strategic partnership between CAS and Shanghai. According to the institute's own account of its acceptance meeting, CAS and the Shanghai Government decided to jointly establish the institute under their 2008 cooperation agreement and a 2008 CAS leadership meeting decision. The founding was presented as a model for deep integration between the national knowledge-innovation system and a regional innovation system, intended to advance academy-locality cooperation to a new level.

After a period of preparation, SARI passed its acceptance check on 27 November 2012. The acceptance meeting was held in Pudong New Area, chaired by CAS Vice President Shi Erwei, and attended by CAS President Bai Chunli, Executive Vice Mayor of Shanghai Yang Xiong, President of the CAS Shanghai Branch Jiang Mianheng and Vice Mayor Shen Xiaoming. The committee heard the preparation progress report, passed the acceptance conclusion, announced SARI's first-term leadership, and Bai Chunli issued the institute certificate and unveiled the institute plate together with Yang Xiong. SARI's English introduction therefore dates the joint establishment to 2012.

Location in Zhangjiang Science City

SARI sits in Zhangjiang, Pudong, an area the institute describes as the core area of Zhangjiang Science City. At acceptance, 150,000 square metres of research facility construction had been completed and put into use, with research equipment worth 150 million yuan in operation. Zhangjiang is also home to the SSRF campus, and SARI's facilities pages place the synchrotron, the soft X-ray free-electron laser and the protein science facility in the same Zhangjiang high-technology area. That co-location is central to the institute's identity: a research institute built around large scientific facilities, rather than a conventional disciplinary institute that later acquired them.

Mission and research focus

SARI's English introduction states that it focuses on the development, construction and operation of large-scale scientific facilities for advanced light sources, and conducts innovative research and core technology research and development in accelerator science, photon science, energy science and information science. Its stated purpose is to support cutting-edge scientific research and to provide core technologies and integrated technology solutions. At its founding the institute pledged to engage in innovative research and provide comprehensive solutions for the nation's emerging industries of strategic importance, and to undertake national major projects including Ministry of Science and Technology 863 and 973 projects, as well as innovation projects from CAS and Shanghai.

The five research divisions at acceptance

At the time of the 2012 acceptance, SARI had established five research divisions: Information Technology; Energy and Environment; Life Sciences; Space Technologies; and Frontier Studies and Advanced Materials. It had around 800 staff, described as talents gathered from all over the world, and was judged competent to serve national strategy and support regional innovation system construction. The five-division structure shows the breadth intended from the start: alongside photon science and facility engineering, SARI was designed to work on energy and environmental questions, life sciences linked to the protein facility, information technology, space technologies and advanced materials.

Supporting institution for the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility

SARI is the supporting institution of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF). SSRF is a third-generation, medium-energy synchrotron light source in Zhangjiang consisting, in the institute's description, of a 150 MeV electron linac, a full-energy booster, a 3.5 GeV electron storage ring and its beamlines. It has been open to users since 6 May 2009, and it was the first third-generation synchrotron light source on the Chinese mainland. Viewed from above, the facility is widely noted for its nautilus-like form.

SSRF gives priority to original fundamental research, basic applied research and technical innovation research meeting major national demands, and it welcomes users undertaking major research projects from the nation, ministries and commissions, and from industry. Published overviews record that since May 2009 SSRF has provided hundreds of thousands of hours of user beam time and served tens of thousands of users from universities, institutes, hospitals and high-technology companies at home and abroad.

SSRF Phase II and the upgraded light source

SARI undertakes construction of the SSRF Phase II beamline project. That project was launched in November 2016 and completed in July 2023, and the upgraded facility passed national inspection and acceptance in May 2024. Reporting of the acceptance, quoting SARI Vice President Tai Renzhong, describes 16 newly built state-of-the-art beamlines and experimental stations, auxiliary laboratories, a user data centre, support systems and associated facilities, together with an accelerator performance upgrade. Research summaries of the completed Phase II state that all 16 new beamlines, with nearly 60 experimental methods, passed acceptance testing by CAS and are in operation, taking SSRF to more than 40 experimental stations across research fields.

Among the fields served are structural biology: SSRF supports multiple macromolecular crystallography beamlines and an endstation for white X-ray work, managed for academic and industrial users who need to determine macromolecular crystal structures. Phase II beamlines such as the tender-energy spectroscopy beamline extend methods including X-ray fluorescence and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, with its non-focusing endstation opened to users in January 2024.

Protein science, SXFEL and SHINE

SARI is also the supporting institution for the National Facility for Protein Science Shanghai, whose beamlines and endstations have operated as part of the Zhangjiang facility cluster since the mid-2010s. Beyond SSRF, SARI undertakes construction of the Shanghai Soft X-ray Free-Electron Laser (SXFEL) and the Shanghai High Repetition Rate XFEL and Extreme Light Facility (SHINE).

SXFEL, located on the SSRF campus, was developed in two phases: a test facility started in 2014, which achieved its design goals and passed national acceptance in November 2020, and a user facility started in 2016. CAS facility descriptions call SXFEL the first soft X-ray free-electron laser facility covering the water-window band, 532 metres in total length, with two undulator lines, two coherent X-ray beamlines and five experimental stations, and China's first X-ray free-electron laser user device. SHINE, approved by the National Development and Reform Commission and formally started after that approval, is the hard X-ray free-electron laser under construction alongside the operating SSRF and SXFEL, making Zhangjiang a multi-source photon-science cluster under SARI's stewardship.

Partnerships with industry and the region

From its acceptance period, SARI worked closely with companies and academia. Its 2012 acceptance report names partners including Shanghai Electric, Shell, Boeing, BP and Total. That pattern fits the institute's founding rationale: Shanghai's government presented mobilising CAS and Shanghai resources to found SARI as an important measure for independent innovation, talent gathering, and science-and-technology reform and industrial restructuring in the city. As a jointly built CAS-Shanghai institution, SARI is expected both to run national facilities to an international standard and to convert research into integrated technology solutions for strategic emerging industries.

Education and talent role

SARI describes itself as a research and educational institution, not only a facility operator. Its divisions and facilities train graduate researchers through work on accelerators, beamlines, energy systems, life-science platforms and advanced materials, and its user facilities serve as a training ground for scientists from across China and abroad who come to Zhangjiang for beam time. The institute's own framing at acceptance stressed cultivating and gathering talents as one of its core contributions to Shanghai's innovation capability, alongside the hardware of the light sources themselves.

Significance

SARI's significance rests on a rare combination. It is a young CAS institute, formally accepted only in 2012, yet it carries responsibility for some of China's most heavily used large research infrastructure: SSRF, open since 2009 and substantially upgraded through Phase II by 2023-2024; the national protein science facility in Shanghai; SXFEL; and SHINE under construction. Its five founding divisions, roughly 800 staff at acceptance, industrial partnerships, and Zhangjiang location make it both a facility institute and a multidisciplinary research institute in its own right, and a central pillar of the Zhangjiang comprehensive national science centre's photon-science cluster.