The Institute of Population Research, Peking University

www.pkuipr.net/ipr/index.html

The Institute of Population Research, Peking University (IPRPKU), is a research organization with teaching and training functions. It has study programs that trains students leading to the Master's and the PhD degrees.

Formerly a population research unit created in 1979 in the Department of Economics, IPRPKU was established with the approval of the Ministry of Education and began to accept students seeking the Master's degree in population studies in 1984 and the PhD degree in 1991. By 2004, the Institute has trained 138 students receiving the Master's degree including 21 foreign students and 40 students receiving the PhD degree.

In 1992, with financial supports from the United Nations Population Fund and the World Health Organization (WHO), the Institute introduced a program that trained foreign students to obtain the Master degree in population studies. In Asia, only three countries have similar training programs.

The Institute is a sub-unit of the Peking University Social Sciences Post-Doctoral Mobile System and accepts post-doctoral fellows to work in the Institute.

In 1991, IPRPKU was named by the World Health Organization as a WHO Collaborating Center on Reproductive Health and Population Science. In 2000, the Institute became the Principal Scientist Supporting Unit of the China Birth Defects Intervention Program. In 2002, the Institute became the Principal Scientist Unit of the China Genetic and Environmental Control Studies on Birth Defects of the National Basic Research and Development Project (the "973" Project). In 2003, the Peking University Institute for Ageing Study was established in the IPRPKU.

Since 1999, IPRPKU has engaged in 104 research projects, including 21 national projects, 48 provincial projects, 12 international projects and 23 other projects. Every researcher has a number of important projects.

IPRPKU has organized 25 important national and international academic meetings since 1999. For promoting scholar exchanges, the Institute has an internal seminar series which takes place generally once every two weeks (The Ma Yinchu Population Science Seminar Series). The Institute invites well-known and influential national and international scholars in population studies and related fields to give talks and reports of their studies. Forty-six of such seminars had been held. Faculty members of the Institute visited other population institutions often each year in Asia and the Pacific as well as in Europe and America, on both short-term and long-term bases.