On August 21, 2025, the kick-off meeting for the Joint Application Research on Artificial Intelligence Platform for Scientific Discovery (Project No. 2025YFE0102600) was successfully held at the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences. This project will support the collaboration between CNIC and the National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS) of South Africa. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Qiao Wang, Deputy Director of the Division of Research Management of CNIC.

Ms. Ye Yang and Ms. Congcong Wang from the International Cooperation Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, provided guidance on project development. On behalf of the leading organization of China, Dr. Chun Long, Deputy Director of CNIC, delivered a welcome address with future plans to support project implementation.

An expert review panel, led by Academician Haiqing Lin from Zhejiang University, carried out an in-depth evaluation of the project plan. Dr. Zongguo Wang, Chinese PI of the project, presented the implementation plan on behalf of the collaborative research team in China. During the discussion, Chinese experts supported the collaboration plans with South Africa, and provided constructive suggestions on several areas, including the construction of the AI platform’s resource pool, job scheduling technologies, and domain-specific operator libraries. The project team will discuss wirh NITheCS and other experts out of China for more concrete collaborative research plans.

The launch of this project marks an important step toward advancing AI-driven scientific discovery through collaboration with South Africa.