The 2020 Scientific Advisory Board and Peer Review Committee Meeting of Shanghai Institute of Immunology (SII) was successfully held on December 12-13, 2020. The Scientific Advisory Board consists of six internationally renowned scientists: Professor Tian Xu, Vice President of West Lake University, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board; Professor Chen Dong, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, former Dean of Tsinghua University School of Medicine, and Director of Institute for Immunology, Tsinghua University; Professor Xinhua Feng, Director of Life Sciences Institute, Zhejiang University; Professor Ming Lei, Executive Director of Shanghai Institute of Precision Medicine, the Ninth People's Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine; Professor Xiaolong Liu, Director of Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Feng Shao, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Deputy Director for Academic Affairs, National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing. A brief opening ceremony was held in the morning of the 12th, in which Fan Jiang, Vice President of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, delivered a speech on behalf of the School of Medicine. Yuanjin Xu, Director of the HR department of the School of Medicine, Jianqing Ding, Director of the Science and Technology Development, and Liang Chen, Secretary of the CPC Committee of Shanghai Jiao Tong University College of Basic Medical Sciences attended the opening ceremony. The opening ceremony was hosted by Lijuan Fang, Deputy Director of Shanghai Institute of Immunology.

Vice President Fan Jiang firstly expressed her heartfelt thanks to all the experts and highly affirmed the development and achievements of the Institute in the recent years under the leadership of Director Bing Su. She said that the Institute just like a free exploration of scientific “new Lingang area", has become an experimental field for early and pilot experiments of the School of Medicine. Relying on the policy of “Academic Special Zone”, many institutional explorations and attempts of SII especially in the evaluation mechanism of scientific and technological talents to implement the international common peer review system, provide a good example for the development of the School of Medicine. She emphasized that the core of international evaluation is the assessment of talents. As a research institution in the university, the breakthrough of scientific research and the vitality of cultivating talents are fundamental to the development and success of the institute. Firstly, it should be able to gather a group of excellent talents. Secondly, the cohesive team should be able to grow here, and thirdly this team can cultivate new excellent talents. She expressed that the School of Medicine attaches great importance to the international assessment of SII and hopes that the top experts of the Scientific Advisory Board can conduct a comprehensive, scientific and multi-level assessment, and expects that this international assessment will provide international perspectives and ideas for the future development of SII in related basic disciplines. On behalf of College of Basic Medical Sciences, Liang Chen said that SII had achieved remarkable development under the leadership of Director Bing Su in recent years, and that College of Basic Medical Sciences and SII had always been integrated with each other and developed synergistically.

Director Bing Su thanked School of Medicine, College of Basic Medical Sciences and functional departments for their continuous support and assistance to the development of the Institute, and briefly introduced the development of the Institute since 2012 in terms of basic platform construction, talent team construction, scientific research, postgraduate training, basic clinical translational research and internationalization, etc. He also gave an in-depth reflection and outlook on the bottlenecks encountered in the development and the goals of next stage. He said that the Scientific Advisory Board was held to summarize the stage development of the Institute on one hand, and to help the Institute clarify the gap between itself and its counterparts at home and abroad, to further deepen the reform, to condense the research direction, and to find the right positioning and comprehensive layout for the next stage of development of the Institute.

Principle Investigator Leng-siew Yeap and other nine investigators subsequently conducted work report for mid-term evaluation. The experts exchanged questions and made pertinent suggestions on the advancements and innovativeness of research directions, the ability to propose and solve scientific problems, the academic characteristics and influence in the field, the potential of scientific research development, the training of young talents, the service and contribution to the discipline, and the future planning, etc. In the morning of the 13th, Academician Guoqiang Chen, President of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, came and listen to the work report of Lei Shen and other five Principle Investigators for faculty help SII to guide the young talents, and promote SII to be a scientific research institution and talent training base with global influence.

On the afternoon of 13th, Professor Tian Xu, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board, presided over the Scientific Advisory Board Meeting. Director Su Bing, Jinke Cheng (Dean of College of Basic Medical Sciences), Yuanjin Xu, Yexuan Tao (Director of the Department of Discipline Construction), and all the experts had an in-depth communication and discussion on the evaluation and finally formed the Scientific Advisory Board's evaluation report by combining the external review opinions of international peer experts. The Scientific Advisory Board found the overall development of SII, especially the vigorous development since 2016, very impressive and unanimously praised Director Bing Su for attracting a number of outstanding talents in a short period of time and building the Institute into a nationally renowned and internationally influential institute. While highly affirming the work achieved by this research team in the field, they also suggested that young researchers should consider the scientific direction in the context of solving biological problems, think more deeply about the scientific problems in the research field, avoid basic research oriented to publishing articles and following hot spots, and think more about how to make systematic research in related research fields in the next 5-10 years that will have an international impact. The Institute should start from the overall situation of meeting the national strategic needs, benchmarking with the Institute for Immunology, Tsinghua University, Life Sciences Institute, Zhejiang University and other top research institutions in China, cultivating more talents for China's immunology research, striving to make landmark work in the field of immunology, and cultivating several international leaders. We should give strong and continuous support to outstanding young scientists with development potential, provide competitive treatment and stable research conditions to support them, and create a research environment that is conducive to giving full play to the innovative vitality of talents and producing major breakthrough research results.