The Joint Research Center was founded by ITCS (Institute for Theoretical Computer Science) at Tsinghua University, CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) at MIT, and ITCSC (Institute of Theoretical Computer Science and Communications) at CUHK.

This center aims to nurture and develop talented students and researchers, and to create knowledge for the advancement of computer science. Prof. Andrew Yao, Distinguished Professor-at-large of CUHK, Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) of Tsinghua Universitys, will serve as center director for Tsinghua University and CUHK. Prof. Silvio Micali, Associate Provost of MIT, will serve as the center director for MIT. The joint center will lead international research within the field of computer science by employing world-class resources among the three universities.

Initially, the center will focus on the theory of computation and gradually will expand to various other research areas, such as computational biology and machine learning.