Tongji University

Tongji University has a long history and a distinguished reputation and is one of China’s earliest national universities. It is a national key university directly administered by the Ministry of Education and jointly supported with Shanghai Municipality. After 119 years, it has become a distinctive, comprehensive, research-oriented and international university with substantial influence in China and abroad and overall strength among the country’s leading universities.

It began in 1907 as the Tongji German Medical School, established by German physician Erich Paulun with support from the Chinese and German governments and wider society. In 1912, it merged with the newly established Tongji German Engineering School to become the Tongji German Medical and Engineering School. Chinese administrators took over in 1917, and it was successively renamed Tongji Medical and Engineering School and Private Tongji Medical and Engineering College. It became Tongji University in 1923 and a national university in 1927. After the full-scale outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, it relocated six times through Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangxi and Yunnan before settling in Lizhuang, Yibin, Sichuan, in 1940 and continuing to teach. After returning to Shanghai in 1946, it developed into a comprehensive university renowned for five schools: Science, Engineering, Medicine, Humanities and Law.

During the nationwide university restructuring beginning in 1949, its strong humanities, law, medicine, science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, shipbuilding and surveying disciplines were transferred to other universities or relocated inland in their entirety. Meanwhile, civil engineering and architecture disciplines from more than 10 universities came to Tongji, making it China’s largest and most comprehensive engineering university in those fields. After 1978, it undertook two transformations: resuming exchange with Germany and shifting from closed operation to openness, and expanding from a civil engineering and architecture institution to a comprehensive university centered on science and engineering. In 1996, Shanghai Institute of Urban Construction and Shanghai Institute of Building Materials Industry were incorporated, and it joined Project 211. In 2000, it merged with Shanghai Railway University to form the new Tongji University. It joined Project 985 in 2002. Shanghai Aviation Industry School was placed under its administration in 2003. In 2004, it became a centrally managed university. In 2017, it became a Category A university under the national World-Class University initiative.

It consistently regards training top innovative talent as a noble mission and responsibility. It takes undergraduate education as its foundation, postgraduate education as its route to strength, and fostering virtue and educating people as its fundamental task, involving all staff throughout the process and in every aspect. It strives for every student to develop general and specialist foundations, academic literacy, innovative thinking, practical ability, a global outlook and social responsibility, becoming leaders and professional elites who contribute to national rejuvenation and shape the future. It has educated over 400000 graduates, including outstanding politicians, scientists, educators, social activists, entrepreneurs, medical experts and engineering specialists. Among student and faculty alumni, 293 have been elected members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering.

It has established major research platforms including the world’s largest Multifunctional Shaking Table Laboratory, China’s first Ground Vehicle Wind Tunnel Center, first Urban Rail Transit Comprehensive Testing Platform, first Long-Term Seafloor Scientific Observation System, one of the first benchmark National Key Laboratories of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems, and the Ministry of Education Frontier Science Center for Cell Stemness and Fate Editing. It is preparing a National Industrial Metrology and Testing Center for Integrated Circuit Micro- and Nano-Testing Equipment in Shanghai, among the first industrial metrology centers in integrated circuits nationally. It has undertaken major national programs and engineering research projects and produced landmark achievements in key long-span bridge technologies, structural earthquake resistance and disaster prevention, remote sensing and spatial information, intelligent urban traffic guidance, domestically developed smart greenhouses, new energy vehicles, urban wastewater treatment, ocean drilling, molecular genetics of atrial fibrillation, and independently developed national first-grade reference materials for nanoscale angles.

It has long used the wider benefits of strong disciplines and basic research to expand forms and areas of social service and contribute to national and local development. It has provided strong scientific support for major strategic needs including the Belt and Road, Chinese bridges and tunnels, railways and urban rail transit, water environment management, earthquake relief, Yangshan Deep-Water Port, Shanghai World Expo, Chongming Eco-Island, Xiong’an New Area, and Beijing’s subcenter. With local governments, it promotes the Tongji Knowledge Economy Circle, advancing toward annual output in the hundreds of billions of yuan and creating a model of university-local cooperation through integration and coordinated development of campus, community and science park.

It actively expands international cooperation through a network centered on Germany, focused on Europe and reaching worldwide, with more than 300 global partners. It has established 13 international cooperative platform schools, including Sino-German, Sino-French, Sino-Italian, Sino-Finnish, Sino-Spanish and UN IESD platforms, and joint research centers with multinational enterprises including Volkswagen, Siemens, Bayer and IBM. It initiated the China Green University Network and International Green Campus Alliance and served as their first chair. It was elected chair of the UN Environment Programme’s Global Universities Partnership on Environment and Sustainability and was the Asia-Pacific region’s first university to receive an International Sustainable Campus Excellence Award.

It has 33 specialist schools, 12 affiliated hospitals and 13 affiliated primary and secondary schools. Its 4 main campuses—Siping Road, Jiading, Huxi and Hubei—and research bases including Lingang and Zhangjiang cover approximately 2.75 square kilometers, with approximately 2.25 million square meters of building floor area. Its library holds approximately 4.79 million books.

It has 18920 full-time undergraduates, 12713 master’s students, 9942 doctoral students and a further 4426 international students. It has 3206 full-time teachers, including 1052 with full senior professional and technical titles, 18 Chinese Academy of Sciences members and 29 Chinese Academy of Engineering members, including joint appointments. It has 6 distinguished teachers under the Ten Thousand Talents Plan, 61 professors under the Ministry of Education Chang Jiang Scholars Program, 84 recipients of Category A Young Scientists Fund projects, formerly the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 23 chief scientists of the National Basic Research Program, and 405 outstanding young talents including Young Chang Jiang Scholars and National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars recipients. It has 8 national teaching teams, 11 National Natural Science Foundation innovative research groups, 12 Ministry of Education Innovation Team Development Program teams, and 3 Ministry of Science and Technology innovation teams in key fields.

Its disciplines cover 11 categories: engineering, science, medicine, management, economics, philosophy, literature, law, education, art and interdisciplinary studies. It admits students to 70 undergraduate programs and has 49 first-level master’s degree authorization fields, 30 professional master’s degree authorization fields, 42 first-level doctoral degree authorization fields, 12 professional doctoral degree authorization fields, 35 postdoctoral research stations, and 6 training bases for top students in basic disciplines. It has 124 research platforms at provincial or ministerial level or above, including 6 national key laboratories, 6 national engineering or engineering technology research centers, 1 national science and technology resource sharing service platform, and 1 national major science and technology infrastructure facility. It was selected as a Ministry of Science and Technology National Demonstration Base for Innovative Talent Training and approved to establish 2 National Science Popularization Education Bases.

“Serve the World Together, Honor Science, Lead through Innovation, Pursue Excellence.” Tongji University is advancing toward its goal of moving with the nation, benefiting society through science and education, and becoming a world-class university with Chinese characteristics.