Zhejiang Province, which is striving to become a high-level and innovative province, recently put forward a new term "Zhejiang Laboratory".

Zhejiang Lab, Liangzhu Lab, Westlake Lab, Hupan Lab are the first batch of four Zhejiang Provincial laboratories that attracts people’s attention. They are crowned with the names that have characteristics of Zhejiang's humanity and geography, probably implying that innovation is just like the water running ceaselessly in the rivers and lakes in Zhejiang.

The layout of the first four Zhejiang provincial laboratories is very clear: Zhejiang Lab and Hupan Lab focus on "Internet +" scientific innovation construction, whereas Liangzhu Lab and Westlake Lab focus on life and health sciences innovation construction.

Zhejiang Lab takes the lead in building Zhejiang Provincial Lab of Intelligent Science and Technology. "Zhejiang will focus on the core direction of intelligent technology while building provincial laboratories, and the innovative achievements will provide important support for the future intelligent society," said Zhu Shiqiang, director of Zhejiang Lab.

Alibaba DAMO Academy (the Academy for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook) is leading the construction of Hupan Lab. Zhang Jianfeng, the director of Hupan Lab, said that they will focus on solving the key, common, and bottleneck technical problems that constrain the development of the digital economy, so as to make Zhejiang a source of innovation in the world's digital economy.

Zhejiang University takes charge of building Liangzhu Lab. “The Lab is oriented towards future medicine, aiming at future diseases, developing future drugs and medical technologies, and creating medical models suitable for the future,” said Liu Zhihong, the director of Liangzhu Lab.

Westlake University is responsible for the Westlake Lab. Yu Hongtao, director of the Westlake Lab, said that metabolic and aging diseases as well as tumor mechanism research are the most universal and challenging key fields of life science and biomedical science. The Lab will promote translational applied research and emergency medical research through interdisciplinary research methods of multi-field exchanges and cooperation.

The leading construction companies of the four provincial laboratories interpreted what is the new nationwide system: under the market environment, the government, enterprises, society and other efforts should be mobilized to organically combine the market mechanism and the role of the government, so as to realize the collaboration between government, industry, universities and research institutes.

To explore the core technology, Zhejiang Lab put forward the creative idea of a collaborative mechanism of "building peak on the plateau".

Hupan Lab, on the other hand, proposed to build two core support bases of academic cooperation and talent training with relevant superior forces and to build a future-oriented public service platform of data technology.

Liangzhu Lab not only combines basic research and clinical practice but also promotes the integration of clinical needs-oriented biotechnology and information technology.

Westlake University explores an efficient achievement transformation model to support the development of innovative industrial clusters. The future innovation achievements of Westlake Lab will also directly benefit from this mode of "deep incubation" and accelerate the process of industrialization.

To support the construction of a high-level innovative province and promote the high-quality economic and social development of Zhejiang, the provincial Lab will play an unlimited role in the future. The average investment of each provincial Lab is about 10 billion yuan in every five years, which will be rewarded with a steady stream of innovation momentum.

According to the responsible person in Zhejiang Provincial Department of Science and Technology, Zhejiang will strengthen the Lab system construction, solve the weak links and deep-seated problems in scientific and technological innovation, and promote the high-quality economic and social development.

(Compiled by Xu Yuhong, translated by Zou Guan'er)