Lanzhou Jiaotong University

Lanzhou Jiaotong University, founded in 1958, is the third railway university in China formed by the division of departments from Tangshan Railway College (now Southwest Jiaotong University) and Beijing Railway College (now Beijing Jiaotong University). The university is currently a co-construction institution of China State Railway Group Co., LTD., the National Railway Administration and the People's Government of Gansu Province, an authorized construction unit of the Confucius Institute at the University of Seville in Spain, a supported university under the Ministry of Education's "Central and Western Education Revitalization Plan", a selected university under the Ministry of Education's "Outstanding Engineers Education and Training Program", and a demonstration university for deepening Innovation and entrepreneurship education reform under the Ministry of Education. Gansu Province's high-level university and "First-Class discipline" construction university, approved by the Ministry of Education as a "three-to-one" counterpart support university for Tianjin University, Beijing Jiaotong University and Southwest Jiaotong University. The university is a demonstration base for international students of the Ministry of Education and has a large number of talent cultivation bases such as the National Language and Character Promotion Base, the National Railway Science Popularization Base, the National Beidou Science Popularization Base, the Ministry of Education Cultural Inheritance Base and the Northwest Region Minor Language Training Base.

History and Evolution

The school's predecessor can be traced back to the Shanhaiguan Beiyang Railway Official School established in 1896 and the Beijing Railway Management Training Institute established in 1909. In 1958, the Ministry of Railways decided to establish Lanzhou Railway College, the third railway undergraduate college in China, in Lanzhou. Five departments, namely Railway Transport, Railway Electrical Engineering, Railway Architecture, Railway Bridge and Tunnel, and Railway Machinery, with seven undergraduate programs and five junior college programs, were moved to Lanzhou as a whole from Beijing Railway College (formerly Beijing Railway Management Training Institute, now Beijing Jiaotong University) and Tangshan Railway College (formerly Shanhaiguan Beiyang Railway Official School, now Southwest Jiaotong University). More than 340 experts and scholars from the Beijing and Tangshan institutes, represented by Lin Dami, Shen Zhiyang, Hu Chunnong, Sun Qiyin and Zhang Dianzhi, came to Lanzhou to teach and successfully enrolled 446 new students that year. In the 1960s, a group of science and technology associate doctors and graduate students who had studied in Jiangsu were transferred to strengthen the teaching staff. The older generation of educators led students from all over the country to work together in the harsh environment of Northwest China, with their wisdom and feelings of building, loving and taking pride in the school, to start the first sixty years of Lanzhou Jiaotong University. In 2000, the university adopted a system of "co-construction by the central and local governments, with local governments taking the lead in management". Lanzhou Railway College was renamed Lanzhou Jiaotong University in 2003. Inheriting the tradition of Beijing and Tang, rooted in Northwest China, the school has blazed a trail of distinctive education centered on rail transit, becoming the cradle of China's railway engineers, and has achieved remarkable results in talent cultivation, scientific research, social service, cultural inheritance and innovation, and international exchange, earning a good reputation. It has now developed into a higher education institution with distinct industry characteristics, outstanding local service capabilities, a domestic reputation and an irreplaceable position in the construction of rail transit in Northwest China.

Scale of the school

The school has two campuses covering an area of 1,405 mu, with a building area of approximately 879,500 square meters and a library collection of 2.09 million volumes. It has 20 affiliated colleges (departments) and one national university science park. There are 30,437 full-time students, including 22,102 undergraduates, 7,587 postgraduates (915 part-time), 496 doctoral students, 212 international students and 804 vocational college students.

The school has a total of 2,279 staff members, including 1,838 full-time teachers, 322 professors, 703 associate professors, and 916 teachers with doctoral degrees. There are two academicians, two distinguished professors and one young scholar under the Changjiang Scholars Program, three innovative leading talents and one young top-notch talent under the National Special Support Program for High-level Talents, one talent selected for the National Project of 100,000 Talents, and five outstanding talents of the New Century Program of the Ministry of Education. Six Changjiang Scholars and six National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars have been flexibly recruited. There are 9 outstanding leading talents of Gansu Province, 44 leading talents of Gansu Province, 16 young talents of Longyuan, 49 Special Talents of the Flying Heaven Program, and more than 380 high-level talents of all kinds, including recipients of the National May Day Labor Medal, National Outstanding teachers, National Model Teachers, Zhan Tianyou Railway Science and Technology Award recipients, MAO Yisheng Railway Science and Technology Award recipients.

Discipline and specialty construction

The school has 66 undergraduate programs (63 enrollment programs) and 33 major categories. Four second prizes of National Teaching Achievement Awards in 2023 (2 as principal and 2 as participants). There is one national-level teaching team and one Huang Danyan-style teacher team in national universities. Four national experimental teaching demonstration centers, one national virtual simulation experimental teaching center, eleven national engineering practice education centers, 25 provincial teaching teams and 16 provincial experimental teaching demonstration centers. There are 27 national first-class undergraduate program construction points, 6 national characteristic programs, 10 provincial first-class program construction points, 1 national undergraduate program comprehensive reform pilot, 22 national first-class courses, and 3 national excellent courses. There is one national experimental zone for innovation in talent cultivation, and 15 programs have successively passed the engineering education professional accreditation (evaluation).

Relying on provincial first-class disciplines and national first-class major construction points, the school has set up special classes such as Zhan Tianyou Class, MAO Yisheng Class and Outstanding engineer Training Program in its advantageous majors including civil engineering, transportation, vehicle engineering and rail transit signal and control. The base for cultivating outstanding students in the basic discipline of Geographic Information Science of our university is one of the ten existing provincial-level bases for cultivating outstanding students in basic disciplines in Gansu Province.

Talent cultivation

The school has always adhered to Jiaotong University's fine educational tradition of "rigorous scholarship and strict requirements", and has been committed to cultivating senior specialized talents with solid foundations, broad knowledge, strong abilities, high quality, innovative spirit and international vision. Since its establishment, the university has sent more than 200,000 outstanding students to the country and society, and has become an important base for cultivating talents for the national railway transportation industry and engineering and technology in the western region. Over the years, the school has consistently ranked among the top provincial universities in terms of the employment rate of its graduates. Over the past three years, about 40 percent of graduates have signed up for the rail transit industry, 65.20 percent for state-owned enterprises, 47.21 percent for Fortune 500 companies, and 69.02% for jobs outside the province. Employers' satisfaction with our graduates reached 98.7 percent. The school has been honored with titles such as "National Advanced Collective in Graduate Employment Work of Regular Institutions of Higher Learning" and "National 50 Typical Experience Universities in Graduate Employment", and has cultivated a large number of outstanding talents represented by Academician Lai Yuanming of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, making outstanding contributions to China's rail transit industry and local economic construction and development.

Scientific research

The school has always adhered to industry-university-research cooperation, actively served national and local economic development, and formed core technologies and advantageous industries in civil structures, environmental protection, information engineering, automatic control, intelligent transportation, logistics management, equipment manufacturing, green energy, natural disaster prevention and control, etc. Some research achievements have reached the international advanced and domestic first-class level. It has participated in the research and construction of major railway projects such as the Qinghai-Xizang Railway, Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway and Lanzhou-Chongqing Railway. It was the first university in the country to undertake scientific research projects on the Qinghai-Xizang Railway, solved the world problem of permafrost on the Qinghai-Xizang Railway, and won the Special Prize for National Scientific and Technological Progress. There are four Ministry of Education Changjiang Scholars Innovation Teams such as "Research on the Durability of Materials and Structures in the Dry and Cold Northwest Region", and three national-level research platforms such as "National Engineering Research Center for Green Coating Technology and Equipment", "National and Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Disaster Prevention and Control Technology in Road and Bridge Engineering", and "National and Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Application of Geographic Conditions Monitoring Technology". Two key laboratories of the Ministry of Education, namely "Optoelectronic Technology and Intelligent Control", "Thermal Engineering of Railway Vehicles", "Key Technologies and Equipment for Concentrated Solar Thermal Energy Industry", and one provincial-ministerial co-construction collaborative innovation center; There are 14 provincial and ministerial key laboratories, including the Railway Four Electric BIM and Intelligent Application Key Laboratory, the Railway Industry Key Laboratory of Intelligent Control of Plateau Railway Transport, Gansu Provincial Rail Transit Research Center, Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Yellow River Water Environment, Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Surveying and Mapping Science and Technology, etc. There are five provincial research institutes, including the Northwest Transportation Infrastructure Renewal Intelligent Industry Research Institute and the Gansu Yellow River Basin Ecological Protection Industry Research Institute, and the number of provincial and ministerial-level and above research platforms has reached 83. In 2025, the international Journal Journal of Geovisualization and Spatial Analysis (JGSA) was officially included in the first category of Earth Sciences in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Library and Information Center Journal Classification Table, and was rated as a Top journal.

In the past five years, it has undertaken 2,791 various horizontal and vertical research projects and won 151 provincial and ministerial-level or above scientific and technological achievements awards, including one second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award, ten first prizes of Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award, one first prize of the 16th Gansu Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Achievement Award, and one special prize of Science and Technology Award of China Railway Society 1 First prize of National Surveying and Mapping Science and Technology Progress Award. 41 university-local and university-enterprise cooperation agreements were signed, 158 enterprises entered the university science park, 51 incubated enterprises, total output value of enterprises entering the park in 2024 was 350 million yuan, profits and taxes 26.7499 million yuan.

External exchanges and cooperation

The school actively engages in international exchanges and cooperation. It has established long-term cooperative relations with over 60 institutions of higher learning in more than 30 countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Canada, Japan, Spain and Brazil. In 2021, the university was authorized by the China Foundation for International Chinese Language Education to establish a Confucius Institute with the University of Seville, Spain, which has a 500-year-old history of education, becoming the first university in Gansu Province to establish a Confucius Institute in a developed country. Actively serving the Belt and Road Initiative and the Transportation Powerhouse strategy, the university is a member of the "Belt and Road University Strategic Alliance" and the "China-Russia Transport University Alliance", and has carried out in-depth cooperation and exchanges with Belt and Road countries and universities such as Russia, North Macedonia, Kazakhstan and Laos. Actively engaged in the training of international students, achieving full coverage of Chinese language preparatory, undergraduate, master's and doctoral study levels, and conducting the stationing of foreign postdoctoral fellows, cultivating more than 2,000 international talents in transportation, information, infrastructure construction and other fields for more than 60 countries along the Belt and Road.

Development Goals

In January 2023, the school held its 12th Party Congress and proposed the "1152" development goal, that is, to strive for a new breakthrough in the "National First-Class Discipline Breakthrough Project of Transportation Engineering" around the overall goal of building a "high-level university with more prominent regional advantages and more distinct industry characteristics", To achieve five new improvements in talent cultivation capacity, scientific and technological innovation and social service capacity, internationalized education level, faculty construction level, and educational conditions, and to build two new highlands of national rail transit industry technology innovation talent cultivation highland and western region high-speed railway service safety and intelligent operation and maintenance research and innovation highland. The school will firmly seize major strategic opportunities such as the construction of a strong transportation nation and the construction of Gansu Province as a pioneer area for the reform of higher education in the central and western regions in the new era, fully implement the fundamental task of fostering virtue and nurturing talent, uphold the school spirit of "striving forward, living frugally, studying diligently, and being rigorous in scholarship" and the school motto of "virtue, aspiration, learning, and practice", and strive towards the goal of "1152" With vigor and determination, we will strive to build a high-level university with prominent regional advantages and distinct industry characteristics, and make new and greater contributions to the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist power and the construction of a happy and beautiful new Gansu in the new era!