The Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA) was founded in October 1956, which was the earliest governmental research organization in the field of automation.　　  Presently, CASIA has 317 staff members, including one academician, and 120 professors, associate professors and senior engineers. Besides, CASIA has 328 PhD candidates, 186 master students, and 31 post-doctors.

After its 50-year’s exploration and development, CASIA has shaped into an institute that focuses on three major R/D directions: complex information processing, complex systems control, and integrated systems, which are all of importance to the area of intelligence technology. CASIA has also evolved structurally into an institute that encompasses basic research, application research, and high-tech development, which support and complement each other. Presently, CASIA has five R/D departments, including the National Pattern Recognition Laboratory (NLPR), the National Engineering Center for ASIC Design (NECAD), etc., and 11 joint laboratories and engineering centers as well, including the Chinese-French joint laboratory (LIAMA), the Chinese-Korea joint laboratory, and those set up jointly with other social innovation units. In addition, CASIA has created more than ten spin-off high-tech enterprises such as the Beijing Zhongzi Group, the Beijing HanWang Technology, and so on.

Since its foundation, CASIA has made significant contributions to the economic constructions, social progress, science and technology development, and national security of the country. In the early days, CASIA made historic achievements in the control science and contributed to the A-bombs and H-bombs as well as the satellites. Since 1970, CASIA ahs obtained more than 500 R/D achievements, of which more than 140 received awards form the state and municipal governments or ministries, and has been granted more than 80 patents. CASIA has made substantial breakthroughs in complex science, biometrics, character recognition, speech recognition, IC analysis and design, intelligent robots, and integrated automation.

CASIA insists on its internationalizations. More than 200 of CASIA’s R/D staff are annually sent abroad on short-terms for scientific and technological exchanges. CASIA annually hosts more than 100 oversea guests for scientific visit, and chairs more than ten international conferences. Meanwhile, CASIA has actively worked in partnership with a number of internationally well-known research organizations and worldwide companies. In the co-operations with UK, France, Italy, Japan, and Korea, CASIA has explored three international collaboration modes, i.e., the Chinese-French mode in which CASIA carries out its basic research with the world first-class research institute, the Samsung mode in which CASIA works together with renowned worldwide company in high-tech area to promote industrializations, and the C-STAR mode in which CASIA participates in the international research network to enjoy resource sharing and fulfill standardizations.　　

Powered up by the Knowledge Innovation Pilot Project, CASIA is determined to build itself into an internationally well-known national research institute being normative and high efficient, democratic and harmonious, and with beautiful environment, and into an institute with strong scientific and technical innovation yet sustainable development ability.