The Shanghai Institute of Ceramics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SICCAS) was founded as the Shanghai Institute of Ceramic Chemistry and Engineering in 1959 and assumed its current name in 1984.

SICCAS is a comprehensive and unique organization engaged in advanced inorganic nonmetallic materials research. It has achieved outstanding results in pioneering basic research, innovation of high-tech materials and applied research.

Its main research areas include high performance ceramics and superfine microstructures, structural ceramics and composites, inorganic functional materials and devices, energy materials, inorganic coatings, artificial crystals, biomaterials and tissue engineering, environmentally friendly materials, the analysis and characterization of inorganic materials, and the technological study of industrial ceramics and ancient Chinese ceramics.

SICCAS has received 51 national-level awards, as well as hundreds more CAS, ministerial and provincial awards for a total of more than 400 scientific and technical prizes. It has about 1276 valid patents, ranking it among the top 10 institutes in China. In addition, the number of citations of SICCAS papers indexed by SCI places SICCAS among the top 10 institutes in China in that category. SICCAS also publishes the Journal of Inorganic Materials, which is one China’s key academic periodicals and is cited by SCI.

SICCAS has nurtured a large number of talented researchers, thus increasing knowledge of inorganic materials in China. SICCAS has a staff of over 700, including about 500 scientific researchers and technicians. Among this group are one CAS academicians and two academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. SICCAS attaches great importance to developing the next generation of materials scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. It has Ph.D., master’s degree and postdoctoral programs, with over 573 graduate students enrolled as of 2016.

SICCAS enjoys extensive and long-term cooperative relationships with famous universities, institutes and enterprises all over the world. It has partnerships with the Max Planck Institute (Germany), the National Institute for Materials Science (Japan) and the Academy of Science and Technology (South Korea), etc. It has also set up joint labs with Sony and Corning, and has signed about more than one hundred cooperative agreements with organizations such as General Electric, CERN and Samsung, etc. In 2010, it became a member of the International Energy Association.

SICCAS has hosted numerous international conferences on modern ceramic technology. In addition, the institute has hosted the International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics nine times since 1982, making it the world’s most important platform for exchange related to ancient ceramics research.

SICCAS encourages researchers to go abroad for international exchange and study. It also welcomes foreign researchers to engage in cooperative research or give academic lectures at the institute. It has so far hosted Nobel Prize winners Samuel Chao Chung Ting, Tsung-Dao Lee and Ei-ichi Negishi as well as 30 other celebrated foreign researchers as visiting scholars.