As the year turns and a new chapter unfolds, we bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. On this occasion, we wish to extend a Happy New Year to all the USST-ers who have been boldly exploring and forging ahead on the path of high-quality development.
Nurturing talents is the cornerstone of national development. At the 2024 National Education Conference, President Xi Jinping emphasized that building a nation leading in education is the precondition to, and a solid foundation for the construction of a powerful nation and the great cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese-style modernization. Accordingly, we must steadily move towards the established goals. We successfully held the 9th CPC Congress, USST, to gather wisdom for future development, to reassert our determination to work hard, and to assess the fulfillment of our mission and responsibility from the perspective of promoting the integration of education, science, and technology, and to plan the future development with a view to strategic thinking.
This year witnessed a surge in high-quality development, fully demonstrating our capabilities:
We bravely explored the “uncharted territory” and took on the responsibility of serving “matters of great national importance”. Our research on the “super-disc” was published in Nature; The Nanoscale “precision rulers” developed by our faculty members, were applied in large national scientific projects, while our food safety testing technology ensured the safety of people’s food. The number of National Natural Science Foundation projects reached a new high, and technological innovation became a strong driving force. We further promoted educational and teaching reforms, and were selected as a key pilot university for“ideological and political courses” by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. Our students won awards in such competitions as the “China International College students’ Innovation Competition” and the “Challenge Cup”. The academician innovation class and the Gezhi innovation class became "experimental fields" for cultivating top-notch innovative talents. We responded to national needs by shaping new advantages in discipline development and building new engines for future development. The engineering discipline entered the top 1‰ of the ESI global ranking for the first time, and the newly adopted social science general theory discipline entered the top 1% of the ESI global ranking. The launch of micro-majors for graduate students was a trailblazer among the universities in Shanghai. The initiative to share educational resources in the Yangtze River Delta region was implemented, and the prestige that USST is the cradle of outstanding engineers was well established. We put our academic platforms on a growing trajectory and boosted our academic edge, while successfully partnering with such institutions as the Yangtze River Delta National Technology Innovation Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Construction Bank, Jiujiang municipal government. The interdisciplinary projects in medicine and engineering gradually bore fruit. We have been consistently deepening the integration of industry and education, science and education, and thus, improving our social service capabilities.
Every bit of the development involved the sacrifices and contributions of our students as well as our faculty and staff. Our university has been a magnet for talents, with 5 faculty members listed as global “highly cited researchers” in 2024, and we have been honored in various academic titles such as “Outstanding Talents in Shanghai” and “Shanghai Science and Technology Youth 35 Leaders Plan”. We have focused our efforts on the "top priority" of university development, while also striving to address the “small issues” that USST-ers are concerned about. The Qinye Building, the new No. 3 teaching building, and the underground car park have been put into use; such campus facilities as the sports and fitness center, and canteens, have been renovated and upgraded to meet the expectations of our teachers and students. We have conducted in-depth party discipline learning and education, and launched the University Red Culture Education Alliance in Shanghai. The “ideological and political class” at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) has gone viral.
With the wind of reform blowing strong and innovation surging high, the baton of development has been firmly grasped. We must forge ahead and live up to the new journey!
As we embark on the journey of 2025, the future before us has been brightened. The Ninth CPC Congress, USST, has outlined the plan and road map for our university to deepen its reform, to guide us to navigate the turbulent environment and forge ahead. By grasping the requirements of the new era and the orientation of our university, we would closely integrate serving national strategies with promoting academic development, steadily implement the “six major tasks” of high-quality development, and turn “uncertainty” in each phrase into “certainty”.
In 2025, reform and innovation would serve as the driving force. To fulfill the drafted blueprint relies on reforms to create a myriad of possibilities. With the new stage in reform, new changes in demand, and new requirements for our cause, we must be undeterred to overcome difficulties and take effective reform and innovation measures. We should continue to spare no efforts in disciplinary adjustment, talent pool planning, personnel reform, talent cultivation improvement, and internal governance streamlining. Only in this way, can we break institutional bottlenecks, and activate the potential momentum to spur the innovation-driven development.
In 2025, striving forward remains the only option. Time is silent, but action leaves traces. All the accomplishments and achievements are the fruits of efforts and sacrifices made by USST-ers who have blazed trails and weathered storms. The future of our university still relies on all faculty members and students who would make efforts to go ahead. Therefore, we must enhance our sense of responsibility, mission, and urgency, continue to brave forward unhesitatingly and passionately, and make more contributions to better serve the important local and national needs.
The reform is in full swing. 2025 is a crucial year for deepening the reform and implementing the resolutions proposed at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It is also the concluding year of the “14th Five-Year Plan”. Seizing the important opportunity of the new round of “Double First-Class” initiative, we will push forward implementation of reform and innovation in high-quality development.
Wang Linyu, Secretary of CPC Committee, USST
Zhu Xinyuan, President of USST
January 1st,2005
