Dear faculty, students, alumni and friends:

The year 2023 is approaching. On behalf of Nanjing Tech University, we would like to extend our sincere greetings and best New Year wishes to all the faculty and staff who are dedicated to their work, to the students who are striving for excellence, and to the leaders at all levels, alumni, retirees and friends from all walks of life who have long cared for and supported the development of NanjingTech.

Time flies. In 2022, we successfully convened the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), while China is embarking on a new journey to build a modern socialist country in all respects and advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on fronts through a Chinese path to modernization. In 2022, we also celebrated the 120th anniversary of NanjingTech, with a deep root in history; we successfully held the 5th Party Congress of the university. An ambitious blueprint has been drawn for building a domestic first-class and internationally renowned entrepreneurial university with distinctive characteristics!

Inheriting the past glory for future brilliance. We built on past achievements and charts the course for future development. The Party building in all aspects has been strengthened. Following the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era, we furthered study, publicized and implemented the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, while implementing the decisions and arrangements of the 5th Party Congress of the university has made. Nanjing Tech University has witnessed numerous achievements: Our Party Committee was listed as one of the Provincial Demonstration Universities for Party Building and Talent Cultivation. Our theoretical research was one of the first research institutions approved by the Center for Studying Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era in Jiangsu Province. We held a High-quality Party Building Leading High-quality Higher Education Development of Jiangsu plus a promotion activity themed “Foundation Strengthening and Excellence Creation”. One of our schools won the honor of “The Model School (the third batch)” in national party building and one of our units won the honor of “The Model Party Branch” in Party-related cultivation and creation. Besides, one of our schools was awarded as “The Model School” in the provincial party building and 17 of our units were awarded as “The Model Branches” for Party-related cultivation and creation. We have told the stories of Nanjing Tech University well. We published over 300 reports about NanjingTech through central and provincial mainstream media, winning the honors of “The Advanced Unit of News Publication in National Petrochemical Industry”, “The Top 500 Official Accounts of Chinese Universities and Colleges”, and “The Excellent Unit of Education News Promotion in Jiangsu” for 7 consecutive years. We have deepened the work of seeing Party self-governance exercised fully and with rigor. We realized the full party committee supervision for the second time, and thus the working system of comprehensive supervision and oversight was preliminary effective, having been listed as one key project of the supervision work covering the whole province for 5 years. In addition, our efforts concerning the united front became more focused to leverage its role with 43 high-quality suggestion results offered. One party won the honor of “The Advanced Group of Serving the Society”, and 8 of our faculty were elected party central committee members, deputy chairmen of the provincial party committee, or provincial party committee members. In addition, we launched a series of wonderful collective activities. Two of our faculty won the “Provincial May 1st Labor Medal” and the title of “Provincial Woman Pace-setter” respectively. One proposal of our faculty representative union was awarded “The Excellent Faculty Representative Union Proposal”. Moreover, we also won “The National May 4th Red Flag Chinese Communist Youth League Committee” and “The Excellent Practice Unit of Serving the Countryside in Three Aspects during Summer Vacation”.

Exploring each student’s potential through sound education. Sticking to increasing our teaching level, we aimed to improve the quality of independent talent training. Based on moral education and self-cultivation, we constantly improved the work pattern of “implementing ideological and political education”, integrated the ideology of “three-all educations” and “the all-round development of morality, intelligence, athletics, aesthetics and labor”. We carried forward the spirit of Prof. SHI Jun and inspire everyone to be him. Pursuing top-notch innovation, we continued to make efforts to build majors, including 7 national first-class majors and 16 provincial first-class majors. We further optimized education and teaching with two newly-added provincial-level excellent grassroots teaching organizations and 8 provincial-level teaching achievement awards. We insisted on gathering good resources. Cooperating with the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we established The Talent Cultivation School to cultivate graduate students together. Moreover, we integrated and promoted education informatization and were awarded “The Advanced Collective of Higher Education Informatization in Jiangsu Province”. Featured by the integration of industry and education, NanjingTech was listed as “The National Construction Unit of National Innovation and Entrepreneurship School”. We had 3 newly-established provincial professional construction sites and 1 cultivation site of industry-education integration brands. It is awarded as a typical case of “The Double Hundred Plan of School-enterprise Cooperation” by the Higher Education Expo, China. We also had 7 new provincial excellent graduate workstations and the first approved provincial graduate workstations demonstration base. Additionally, our student won the gold medal of the “Internet +” competition again and 2312 awards in discipline competitions above the provincial level, such as the “Challenge Cup” competition.

Forging ahead day and night to achieve goals. Striving to make remarkable achievements, we launched an overall layout for developing the disciplinary ecosystem in an integrated way. Adhering to the seamless connection of discipline map and industry map, we made every effort to promote the establishment of first-class disciplines, continuously optimize the strategic layout of disciplines, and accelerate cross-disciplinary integration. As a result, 8 disciplines were listed as “Key Disciplines in Jiangsu Province during the 14th Five-Year Plan”. NanjingTech’s ESI comprehensive ranks rose to the top 1% in the world, ranking 55th in the mainland of China. Specifically, the ESI rank of our two disciplines, chemistry and materials science, rose 45 and 17 places respectively, joining the global Top 100; furthermore, a record high that 19 disciplines were included in the “China’s Best Disciplines” by Ranking and 5 disciplines were among the top 20% in the country was achieved.

Building up a talent pool to make more progress. Gathering talents for further development, we comprehensively helped to strengthen talent support for modernization. We deepened reform through concerted efforts and upheld both “breaking formalist evaluation standards” and “setting new ones”. Therefore, we are establishing a whole-person and diversified evaluation system that aims at quality and contribution, and we are improving the policy linkage mechanism that focuses on innovation value, capacity and contribution. Besides, we focused on talent cultivation and further expanded our talent pool. We managed to hold the “Explore-Intelligence” International Young Scholars Forum; 6 people were selected for the national high-level talents program, of whom 2 were included in the national overseas high-level talents support program, which was record-breaking progress; 9 people were selected as global scientists with the highest cited academic results; 1 person was selected as an honored member of the Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China (CIESC). What’s more, to integrate the vitality of entrepreneurship and innovation, we expanded the team of entrepreneurial teachers and carried out the dual recruitment of talents with the provincial Industrial Research Institute and Jiangbei New Area, realizing the “dual settlement” of talents. 19 industrial professors at a provincial level joined us. The practice of building entrepreneurial teachers was reported and promoted by Jiangsu Education Brief.

Making unremitting efforts and being immersed in academic research. Making innovations and starting businesses, we carried out a comprehensive approach characterized by “four research targets”. We strengthened the building of strategic forces, set up four new research platforms at the provincial and ministerial levels and completed the substantive construction of the public service platform for the industrial technology foundation of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In addition, we carried out organized scientific research to address key problems and received approval for 164 projects founded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, 14 national key research and development projects, and 20 research projects, all of which reached a record high. We published 2,089 SCI academic papers, including 1 in Nature and 12 in its sub-journals. We won 3 science and technology awards from the Ministry of Education, and 6 provincial science and technology awards; 4 of us won the Hou Debang Chemical Science and Technology Award. Moreover, we are committed to serving social needs. We were listed as “The National Emergency Language Service Team Member Unit”. We worked with provincial environmental protection groups, Nanjing Lishui District, and other organizations to open the major officials’ training class for provincial safety production management. Our research reports and decision-making consultation results, 24 in total, were adopted by provincial units or approved by provincial authorities.

Spreading influence overseas through international cooperation. Expanding our sight to the globe, we advanced high-quality international cooperation and communication. We promoted the “Connecting Chinese and the West” program as we cooperated with Swansea University and the University of Zaragoza, which was approved by the International Cooperation Training of Innovative Talents of the National Scholarship Council for. We also carried out 13 new student exchange programs. Furthermore, we enhanced international collaborative innovation with 12 international industry-university-research cooperation agreements signed, 5 university internationalization projects approved by Jiangsu during the 14th Five-Year Plan, and 2 national and provincial international cooperation research centers established. We became a member of the World Association of Industrial Technology Research Organizations (WAITRO). More importantly, we attempted to build the Confucius Institute by combining technology. We promoted the joint construction of science and technology platforms and the joint training of high-level talents. For example, the Confucius Institute in the University of Johannesburg, organized the finals of the “Chinese Bridge (South Africa Division)”, a Chinese proficiency contest, for students around the world, which was highly appreciated by the Chinese Embassy in South Africa.

Joining hand to start a magnificent journey with a trivial step. Standing firmly in our post, we built a science-based and efficient governance and service system. Build a safe campus, effectively carry out regular pandemic prevention and control, timely and dynamically adjust anti-virus response, and do our best to protect the health of students and faculties. Due to our hard work, we were awarded “The High-quality Safe Campus Construction in Jiangsu Province”, and the collective third-class merit of the internal security work in Jiangsu Province. What’s more, we improved management efficiency, leading to more efficient resource allocation. Thus, we won the praise for the performance evaluation of state assets management of the provincial Party and government organs and institutions, the performance evaluation of opening services of provincial major scientific research infrastructure and large scientific research instruments, etc. Besides, to strengthen the happiness on campus, we put the east entrance of Jiangpu Campus into use, completed the renovation of Puwu Road, and started the check-in of the talent apartments of Jiangpu Campus. In addition to the above efforts, we established a mechanism for on-campus housing transfer and improvement and took advantage of some projects to help students and faculties in a practical way. Consequently, we achieved a continuous improvement of teachers’ and students’ study, work, and campus life experience, which was awarded “The Civilized Campus of Jiangsu Province”.

Looking toward a blueprint for 2023, the prospects are encouraging. Keeping in mind both the domestic and international imperatives, we will focus on the country’s top priorities. We will strive to write a new chapter of building a domestic first-class and internationally renowned entrepreneurial university with distinctive characteristics with perseverance, resolve, dedication and concrete efforts.

I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

Secretary of the CPC University Committee: Prof. RUI Hongyan  President: Prof. JIANG Juncheng