About Taihu Laboratory of Deep Sea Technology Science

Taihu Laboratory of Deep Sea Technology Science

The Taihu Laboratory of Deep Sea Technology Science is China's national-level laboratory for deep-sea technology, headquartered in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, at the China Ship Scientific Research Center (CSSRC). Known in its own English materials as Taihu Laboratory, it was created to give China a dedicated strategic institution for the deep-sea frontier — the technologies needed to enter, explore and work in the deep ocean. Its official website, taihulab.com.cn, records that the laboratory completed registration as an independent legal entity in October 2020, was unveiled on 30 December 2020 and was awarded Jiangsu Provincial Laboratory status. It is jointly built by the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), Jiangsu Province and Wuxi City, and operates as a public institution directly under the Wuxi Municipal Government.

Founding and governance

The laboratory's governance structures were put in place during its first year. Its first council met on 16 October 2021 in Wuxi, and on 20 November 2021 it held the inaugural meeting of its first academic committee. The laboratory's own reporting of that meeting records academician Wu Yousheng as director of Taihu Laboratory, with He Chunrong — also director of the China Ship Scientific Research Center — in the executive leadership at that stage; executive director responsibilities later passed to Ye Cong, who is identified as executive director in Wuxi government reporting on the laboratory's test vessel in 2025. The academic committee drew 26 academicians and experts as members. In the laboratory's own framing, it is an innovation carrier built to implement the national strategy of building a maritime power and the direction to construct national laboratories, aiming at the deep-sea frontier field as laid out in China's 14th Five-Year Plan.

Why Wuxi

Wuxi's claim to host the laboratory rests on the China Ship Scientific Research Center, China's principal ship-science research institution, which is based in the city and is historically associated with China's manned deep-submergence programme. Taihu Laboratory is headquartered at that centre, and its leadership overlaps with it: He Chunrong spoke for both institutions when describing how the laboratory's deep-sea equipment achievements would be converted into industrial capability for Wuxi's Binhu District, including precision manufacturing and special metal and composite materials. The surrounding district also concentrates the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Jiangnan University and other research institutions, giving the laboratory a local ecosystem of computing, materials and engineering support.

Four research directions

The laboratory organises its work in four directions: deep-sea basic and common technology; deep-sea transport — or carrier — technology; deep-sea information technology; and deep-sea operation and support technology. Its orientation is summarised in six frontier themes: deep sea, polar, green, intelligent, autonomous and controllable. Its research teams, as listed on its official site, reflect that spread — they include teams for ship hydrodynamic comprehensive performance simulation, deep-sea mining equipment technology, deep-sea sensing technology, ship industry CAE software and cross-domain platform technology. The deep-sea mining team, for example, is documented as a 23-member group working on high-performance deep-sea mining equipment and the scientific questions behind its core technologies, while the hydrodynamics simulation team records more than 40 undertaken research projects, over 200 papers and more than 40 proposals submitted to the International Maritime Organization by its members.

The Weilai test vessel

The laboratory's best-documented single asset is Weilai, a deep-sea green intelligent technology test vessel co-built by Taihu Laboratory and its Lianyungang Center, with more than ten institutes participating in technical research and supply and CSSC Chengxi Shipyard responsible for overall assembly. Wuxi government reporting records its delivery in Wuxi on 23 July 2025, after six years of research, design and construction. The vessel is described as the most important piece of equipment in the laboratory's land–pond–lake–sea experimental research system and as a pioneering platform in China for green intelligent equipment and systems. Its published particulars are approximately 110 metres in length, about 7,000 tonnes displacement, maximum speed above 15 knots, range of 10,000 nautical miles and endurance of at least 60 days without replenishment, giving it global navigation capability. Executive director Ye Cong described the vessel collaboration as pivotal to the green and intelligent transformation of the shipbuilding industry, and the ship is characterised in Wuxi reporting as a "mobile ocean laboratory" and deep-sea research flagship.

University partnerships

Taihu Laboratory has signed strategic cooperation agreements with a group of universities whose strengths map onto its four directions: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tianjin University, Southeast University, Northwestern Polytechnical University and Harbin Engineering University. The partnership model extends to a wider local alliance — the Taihu Lake Bay Research Institute Alliance, which gained seven new member units including Fudan University and Soochow University at a 2023 ceremony in Wuxi at which the Taihu Laboratory Marine Equipment Technology Collaborative Innovation Center was also inaugurated. That centre is intended to convert the technological achievements of national deep-sea equipment projects into industrial applications for Wuxi and its Binhu District.

Competitions and open innovation

The laboratory also runs open innovation instruments. Together with the Wuxi municipal talent-work authorities, the Wuxi Science and Technology Bureau and Huawei Technologies, it organised the first Ship-Sea Data Intelligent Application Innovation Competition, focused on the intelligent application of marine and ocean data. Its published challenges included recognition of typical surface and underwater targets — ships, fishing nets, buoys, floating objects, reefs and aquatic creatures — to support autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance for intelligent ships and submersibles, and unstructured data compression and processing. Winning teams were offered research support benchmarked to National Natural Science Foundation major-project standards, with no less than one million yuan of project support and further funding channels through Wuxi's "Light of Taihu Lake" programme.

People and scale

The laboratory was planned at a significant scale. Its start-up-stage goals targeted a team of about 1,000 people, growing toward 3,000 researchers as it matures. Recruitment and team pages on its official site show the intended composition: specialised teams led by named researchers, with high proportions of doctoral degree holders and senior professional titles, and members holding roles in international bodies such as the International Towing Tank Conference. The combination of an independent legal-entity structure, a council and academic-committee governance model, and a growth target in the thousands distinguishes Taihu Laboratory from a conventional institute department: it was designed from registration as a standalone national strategic institution.

Role in China's deep-sea strategy

In its own statements, the laboratory frames its mission around the national tasks of deep-sea entry, deep-sea exploration and deep-sea development. Its academic-committee reporting records Director Wu Yousheng setting the goal of building a breakthrough-type, leading and platform-type national laboratory in the field of marine equipment, able to address major national strategic needs, major technological bottlenecks in regional industries and major international frontiers. The delivery of Weilai in 2025, the laboratory's Lianyungang Center, and its land–pond–lake–sea experimental system are the visible infrastructure of that mission: a chain running from simulation and tank testing in Wuxi to open-sea trials.

Standing

Taihu Laboratory's documented trajectory — legal registration in October 2020, unveiling that December, council and academic committee in place by late 2021, university partnerships, a collaborative innovation centre in 2023 and a 7,000-tonne green intelligent test vessel delivered in 2025 — shows an institution that moved within five years from establishment to operating major national deep-sea infrastructure. As Jiangsu's provincial laboratory in the deep-sea field and a jointly built CSSC–Jiangsu–Wuxi institution seated at the China Ship Scientific Research Center, it is the organisational centre of China's deep-sea equipment research effort in the Yangtze River Delta.