Institute of Automation of the  Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA) held a special ceremony to  honor its 45th anniversary here Thursday.

   Dr. Tan Tieniu, president of CASIA, said at the ceremony CASIA  has made contributions to China's control science, the development of China's A-bomb, H-bomb and satellite, the development of China' s intelligent information processing, and the industrialization of scientific achievements.

   The China Automation Technology and Engineering Group, one of  China's first high-tech enterprises founded by CASIA in 1984,  developed the handwriting recognition system, which has occupied  60 percent of China's domestic market.

   Since the 1990s, CASIA has focused on intelligent control and  recognition, and witnessed great breakthroughs in the fields of  integrated automation, voice and pattern recognition and the IC  analysis system.

   At present, CASIA has established three laboratories, six  engineering centers, including the National Laboratory of Pattern  Recognition and the National ASIC Design Engineering Center, and a number of spin-offs for technology transfer and market oriented  research and development.

   CASIA has also strengthened international exchanges, as seen in the Sino-French Joint Laboratory of Information, Automation and  Applied Mathematics founded in the institute. The lab has earned a high reputation from experts and governments on both sides.

   Tan said CASIA has been targeting research in the fields of  intelligent information processing, intelligent control and  integrated automation, and complex system and intelligence science, since the CAS launched the Knowledge Innovation Pilot Program (KIPP) and technology innovation in 1998.

   CASIA, as one of the first institutes to participate in KIPP,  also carried out reforms that resulted in a capital increase of  300 percent.