I recalled my mother's experience of being in bed because of a cerebral hemorrhage when I was in college, and Xiong Xiaoge, the founding chairman of IDG Capital, still vividly remembers it. He told the first financial reporter that in the past 8 months, he had consulted a large number of neurological medical books, and tried to write letters to experts to ask for medical treatment, but he was helpless and regretted.
After this, Xiong Xiaoge began to pay special attention to brain diseases. He said that if the mother's illness is seen today, it is only a mild cerebral hemorrhage, but there was no suitable medical condition at the time. The human brain has hundreds of billions of neuron cells. Today, the brain is still the "black hole" of human cognition. The scientific community also calls brain science the "ultimate frontier" of human beings. Intelligence and other aspects have important application value and social significance. The rapid development of brain science will inevitably bring about a subversive understanding of the nature of human intelligence.
On April 22, IDG Capital announced that it would donate to Tsinghua University-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Science, continuing to pay attention to and support the development of basic science. This is also the continuation of the cooperation between the two parties after the establishment of the Tsinghua-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Science in 2011 after a lapse of ten years.
Xiong Xiaoge told Yicai that ten years ago, the Human Brain Research Institute chose Japan in Asia. With funding from Wen, the Tsinghua University-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research was established. In November of the same year, Peking University and the McGovern Institute for Brain Science of Beijing Normal University were established. Xiong Xiaoge said that charity belongs to him, "it has nothing to do with grand goals, only his own thoughts."
Today, ten years later, he signed a contract at the same location of Tsinghua University. Xiong Xiaoge was full of emotion, "It's just me who signed the contract. Not Mr. Mai.He mentioned that ten years ago, there were very few first-class scholars doing brain research in the world. At that time, the donated funds were mainly used to attract foreign talents and attract them to come back from abroad, as well as for exchanges and visiting scholars, etc. , and part of the exchange funds came from his personal donation. Similarly, the main purpose of this donation is also to introduce talents and academic exchanges. Shi Songhai is one of them. In 2017, at an MIT event in the United States, Xiong Xiaoge met Shi Songhai, told him about Tsinghua's Brain Science Research Institute and suggested that he return to China. Xiong Xiaoge mentioned that at that time the American Experts from the MIT Institute for Brain Science told him that there are no more than 60 top-notch brain science researchers in the world, and about 40 of them are in the United States, and China is even short of such talents, "so I hope more talents will come back. Go to China to do this. "
The research of brain science has far-reaching significance. According to the statistics of the World Health Organization, brain-related diseases, including various neurological and psychiatric diseases, are the largest social burden of all diseases, accounting for 28%, exceeding cardiovascular diseases. The research and diagnosis of brain science-related diseases require more breakthroughs in basic scientific research.
Different from traditional brain research at the cellular and molecular levels in the past, Tsinghua University-IDG/McGovern Brain Research The institute focuses on applying the new discoveries and new advances of the most advanced engineering science and technology to the research of brain science, so as to conduct the most cutting-edge exploration on how to understand the brain, rebuild the brain, and protect the brain. After ten years, the current The institute has nearly 20 independent laboratories and more than 300 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. It has not only become the cornerstone of Tsinghua University's brain research, but also developed into a leading brain neuroscience research base in China.
Taking the achievements of 2020 as an example, Yao Jun's research group published a cooperative paper in "PNAS" to report the research progress of the pathogenesis of bipolar disorder, Xiao Bailong's research group and Li Xueming's research group of the School of Life cooperated in "Neuron" to reveal the mechanical door The "door plug and latch" gating mechanism that controls Piezo ion channels, Professor Shi Songhai and Shi Hang's research group published a research paper online in the journal "Nature" (Nature), revealing for the first time that the centrosome regulates the neural front of the mammalian cerebral cortex The novel mechanism of somatic mechanical properties and division ability, which in turn affects the size and folding of the cerebral cortex, provides a new perspective for studying the behavior of neural precursor cells and the regulation of cortical development.
Xiong Xiaoge told reporters that in the field of scientific basic research, R&D is a time-consuming, labor-intensive, expensive, and extremely low-successful job, but basic research can often improve the level of scientific research, labor productivity, labor productivity, and productivity in a country or region. The improvement of social reality plays a fundamental role. It is precisely because of the understanding of the systematic, complex and long-term nature of basic research that IDG donations are not for investment purposes, but are mainly used to support long-term basic research.
Up to now, McGovern and IDG Capital have donated RMB 200 million to Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing Normal University IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Science, and will continue to support basic research on brain science in China through donations in the future. Not less than 20 million RMB per year, and plans to increase continuously.
Brain research is not only related to human health, but also to the commanding heights of science and technology in future competition. In recent years, it has received high attention from the government, academia and industry.In recent years, the United States, the European Union, Japan and other countries and regions have announced the launch of brain science research, namely the "Brain Project"; In the same year, my country released the "China Brain Project", and brain science became a "must fight".
At the same time, as a frontier science related to human health and social development, concepts such as brain-computer interfaces, brain-like chips, and strong artificial intelligence and start-ups have emerged in large numbers. He has vigorously funded neuroscience research. Although
is still a long way from large-scale application in terms of the current progress in brain science research, the exploration of the industry has been carried out one after another.
Xiong Xiaoge said that brain science, as a sub-field in the medical field, its breakthroughs in basic research are of great significance to the development of basic medicine and clinical medicine, and will also bring about the development of cutting-edge technology industries such as artificial intelligence. huge influence. Ten years ago, IDG Capital's public welfare donations did not combine production and research. Whether some research results can be used for commercial investment, there is no concrete result. However, I will try it next, and I look forward to strengthening the "linkage" and promoting the close collaboration between scientific research and industrial transformation to produce more results. For example, in order to promote the close connection between brain science research and industry, he invited Xu Li, the co-founder of SenseTime, to participate in the relevant work of the Brain Science Research Institute as a director.
He told reporters that from the perspective of investment, there will be a batch of leading technologies every ten years or so."In the era of investing in PC Internet and mobile Internet, institutions will focus on the business model, execution and management capabilities of enterprises; for technology investment, whether investing in brain science, autonomous driving, bioengineering, etc., entrepreneurs are different. Most of them are from research background, and the technical content and technical threshold of enterprise products and services are relatively high. Correspondingly, investment also requires knowledge of technology, and a large number of talents who understand technology and professional fields should be introduced into the team. There are many science and engineering PHDs, so that we can have more professional communication and exchanges with technology entrepreneurs and the combination of production and research." Xiong Xiaoge said.
