Academia Sinica is the highest governmentsponsored academic research institution in Taiwan. It is headed by Dr. Chi-Huey Wong, and supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from mathematical and physical sciences, to life sciences, and to humanities and social sciences. The Institute of Information Science (IIS) was formally established in September 1982 after a five-year preparation period, and is one of the ten institutes and research centers within the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. IIS presently has 35 full-time research fellows, 22 postdoctoral research fellows and over 300 full-time information technology specialists and part-time research assistants supporting research and development of information science and engineering. All members of IIS prescribe to the motto, "Every job is a self-portrait of those who did it; autograph your work with quality," emphasizing excellence and synergistic teamwork effort.

        The mission of IIS is to conduct quality fundamental research in information science, develop cutting edge technologies applicable to advanced information systems, and improve our national competitiveness in information technology, and international visibility. Being a member of the highest research institution in Taiwan, IIS is obligated to assuming the leadership role in the area of information science and engineering, and aims to establish itself as one of the first-class research institutions in the world.

       Current research areas include: Chinese language and information processing, computer communication and networking, computer graphics, computer vision and image processing, design and analysis of algorithms, document analysis and recognition, formal verification, Internet intelligent agents, multimedia, natural language understanding, network and software security, parallel and distributed computing, robotics, web-based computing and eXtensible Markup Language technology. Research funding of IIS is primarily from the Academia Sinica, the National Science Council (NSC), Ministry of Education, Department of Health, and other government agencies, and some from the private sector. Researchers of IIS collaborate with local industries and universities, as well as overseas institutions. IIS publishes a bimonthly journal, the Journal of Information Science and Engineering (JISE). Beginning in July 2005, JISE is jointly published by IIS and by the Institute of Information and Computing Machinery (IICM), which is the largest association in computing in Taiwan. JISE has received the Distinguished Journal Publication Award from NSC in the past few years, and has been included in the SCI Expanded list since 1998. In collaboration with IICM, IIS intends to make this domestic flagship journal in computer science an international one and gain recognition worldwide.

       Not only do we do quality basic research, we also devote our efforts to multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary projects. Our researchers will interact very closely with the "InfoComm Research Center" (tentative name), Academia Sinica, whose primary mission is to conduct multi-disciplinary research and development based heavily on the Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Within InfoComm there are a few thematic centers, in which IIS faculty members have strong presence. For instance, the "Digital Content and Technology Center" fosters research in digital content development in the area of social sciences and humanities using ICT, and carries out the National Digital Archives Program whose aim is to build an environment for creating digital collections and for preserving and presenting our national treasures; the "Biological Computing Center" conducts research in bioinformatics, computational biology and related areas, with collaborating researchers from IIS, Institute of Statistical Sciences (ISI), and Institute of Biomedical Sciences (IBMS); the "Free and Open Source Software Center" will build an Open Source Software Foundry (OSSF), which provides an infrastructure and a common platform to foster open source software (OSS) projects, and allow OSS developers to interact among people in the community and the private sector, strengthening collaborative development of software and building a long-term software repository to be shared and utilized by all; the "Taiwan Information Security Center (TWISC)" represents an integrated effort, consolidating researchers in information security and related areas from across Taiwan by establishing three regional centers at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, at National Chiao-Tung University and at the National Cheng-Kung University; finally the "Grid and Scientific Computing Center", will provide computing, networking and ultra-capacity storage resources for researchers at IIS, ISI, IBMS and Institute of Physics in the areas of bio-computing, high energy physics, scientific computing, etc. To find more information about IIS please consult our web page at http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw or contact us for a complimentary copy of the DVD title "A research and development world of 0's and 1's".