Luohan Academy was founded in Hangzhou on June 26, 2018. It is an open research institute initiated by the Alibaba Group and launched by world-renowned social scientists, including seven Nobel Prize Laureates in economics.The Luohan Academy thus has a two-fold mission. The first is to understand how digital technology can help achieve the common good. The second is to help build a broad research community for systematic and in-depth research leading to new paradigms for solving first-order problems in the digital society. In this endeavor, the academy will abide by the spirit of open science, operating independently under the principles of integrity, inclusion and diversity.Community