The Institute of Information Science (IIS) was founded in 1978, which is the first institute specialized in information science and technology within a Chinese university. It is also the first research institution of Beijing Jiaotong University that has been approved by the Railway Ministry of China. Now, the Institute has been widely recognized with great prestige among the academia in China in the area of information science and technology.
    The Institute has the capacity to offer postdoctoral research station in Signal and Information Processing, PhD degrees and Postgraduate Degrees in Signal and Information Processing, Pattern Recognition and Intelligent System. Now, the Institute conducts research on one of the national key subjects - "Signal and Information Processing" and one of the ministerial-level key subjects - "Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems". The IIS also provides the facilities of postdoctoral research for the PhD scholars home and abroad. There are 34 academic and technical staffs in the Institute, 13 professors, 13 associate professors, 1 senior engineer and 5 lecturers, one Chang Jiang Scholar of Ministry of Education, one National Outstanding Young Investigator Award of NSFC, one Degree Council of the State Council, one Outstanding teacher of National, one Baogang excellent teacher, two national-level experts, three ministry-level experts, three New Century Excellent Talents supported by Ministry of Education, two Technology New Star in Beijing. Over recent years, the Institute has made great efforts to increase its academic capabilities by recruiting and developing qualified researchers. Now, young teachers with doctoral degrees have become the mainstream of the faculty to ensure the sustainable development of the Institute.
    The Institute is equipped with advanced facilities for teaching and research. There are two key laboratories, the "Railway Information Science & Engineering Laboratory", which is one of the key open laboratories awarded by the Ministry of Railway, and the "Advanced Information Science & Network Technology Laboratory", which is another key laboratory awarded by the Beijing Municipal Government. It operates in a state-of-the-art research environment and facilities which appeal to domestic and overseas scholars for visit or study. The main research areas of IIS include advanced information processing theory and technology, image processing, computer vision and computer graphics, pattern recognition, human-computer interaction, virtual reality, speech understanding and speech synthesis, signal diction, information security technology, multidimensional signal processing, computer communication network, etc.
    Over the past thirty years, the Institute has undertaken hundreds of research projects ranging from theoretical exploration to technology application with the support of the National Natural Sciences Foundation (major, key and general), National High-tech Development Projects (863), National Basic Research Program (973), the Railway Ministry and other Ministries. Many research results on information processing computation and hardware designs have been achieved and some of the projects have been awarded with national or ministerial prizes. A large number of research papers have been introduced in international conferences and published in relevant journals home and abroad.
    Today, the Institute has maintained cooperation and exchanges with many research institutions and companies home and abroad, and it has close academic ties with some famous universities of the US, Japan, the UK, France, etc. The Institute organizes international and national academic conferences such as the International Conference on Signal Processing (ICSP) every two years since 1990, which have been widely recognized and functions as an important window for the university to the outside world.