The CAS Institute of Microbiology, which was located in northeast Beijing's Zhongguancun, has recently moved to its new buildings in the north suburb of the city, where most of the CAS institutes in life sciences and geosciences in Beijing area herd together.
The spatial arrangement of the buildings in the new campus is designed more rational, enabling the offices and labs of closely linked disciplines locate on neighboring floors. For instance, the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Resources and CAS Key Laboratory of Systematic Mycology and Lichenology are made neighbors. The spatial centralization of the arrangement will better serve to the academic exchanges and cooperation.
What's more, the design of the new building makes it more convenient to deploy public research platforms and the underpinnings. On the first and second floors of the main building, for instance, there established the information technology center, large-scale equipment center, the public platform of macromolecular structures and the library, while in the side building a high throughput screening platform is to be established.
Interdisciplinary research is an important feature of the world science today. The attempt to relocate a cluster of various institutes in a research compound called the North Suburb S&T Park is aimed at changing the workshop developing mode and further facilitating the interdisciplinary research and cooperation. Several other CAS institutes, such as the Institute of Zoology and the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, have already moved in.