Officials in Shanghai have held a cornerstone-laying ceremony for the ShanghaiTech University project, being built in the Pudong Science and Technology Park of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The university, approved by the Ministry of Education, is a joint project between Shanghai municipal government and CAS.

The university, covering an area of about 84 hectares, is designed to have a capacity of 2,000 undergraduate and 4,000 postgraduate students when it opens in 2014, according to Yin Jie, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Education Committee. It plans to have four colleges expecting to have 800 professional teachers from overseas institutions and CAS providing courses on material, life, information and management sciences.