Located near the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, the Kunming Institute of Zoology (KIZ) serves as a center for research on diverse biological resources of southwestern China, the Eastern Himalayas, and Southeast Asia. Since its establishment in 1959, KIZ has grown considerably. As of November 2013, it has more than 483 faculty members and staff spread across 32 scientific research groups. About 330 post-graduate students, including several international students, work and study in KIZ, as do many national and international collaborators.

As one of the twenty biological institutes in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), KIZ was the only CAS life sciences institute in western China included as part of the Renovation 2020 pick over. Over the next decade, KIZ hopes to continue its success by building its research programs around three key goals: developing non-human primate (NHP) models for both major disease and new pharmaceuticals research; accomplishing theoretical breakthroughs regarding evolution of the genome; and developing and cultivating genetic resources of domestic animals and their wild counterpart species. These goals will be greatly enhanced by the upcoming opening of the CAS-Yunnan Government Laboratory of Biodiversity in Southwest China and the Southwest Institutes for Biological Sciences, both of which are currently under construction.

Housed within the institute are the State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution (GRE) and the Key Laboratory of Animal Models and Human Disease Mechanisms (AMHD), which together comprise the bulk of KIZ’s main researchers focused on the institute’s core research fields: Evolutionary Genetics and Reproduction; Utilization, Development, and Conservation of Diversified Animal Genetic Resources; Genetic Resources of Domestic Animals; Animal Models, Human Disease Mechanisms and New pharmaceuticals Development; and Research on & Applications of Stem Cells. Building their efforts around these cutting-edge topics, PIs at the institute have greatly benefited from recent talent attracting programs, which includes 10 awardees for the National Outstanding Youth Science Fund, one for the Thousand Talents Program (type B), three for the Youth Thousand Talents Program, 17 under the 100-Talents Program, and a further 10 belonging to the High-Level Overseas Talents of Yunnan Province.