In November 1914, 30 students majoring in civil engineering from Qingdao Special Higher College were transferred to Tongji Medical and Engineering College after the latter formally founded the subject of civil engineering and the disciplines of road and railway construction. The centennial history of transport traffic engineering of Tongji University hereby started.
Gurus define universities, and masters nurture talents. The old generation of scholars including Tong Daxun, Zhu Zhaohong, Lin Xiuxian, Yang Peikun, Yao Zukang have laid the foundation for the glorious development of this discipline of transport traffic engineering in Tongji as the major birthplace of new ideas, theories and methdologies of the field in China. Over the past century, this College of Transportation Engineering of Tongji have scored unprecedented achievements in the country as evidenced by the first college with authority to confer doctoral degrees in road and railway engineering, the first doctor of highway engineering, the only post-doc station in the field of road engineering, the first transport engineering research laboratory, and the first Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education in the field of road and transport engineering. The year 2000 marked the formal founding of the College, and since then it has formed the most comprehensive portfolio of disciplines in the field of integrated land transport of China, thus becoming one of the key bases for talent cultivation and scientific research for this field.
As a Chinese saying goes, peaches and plums do not have to talk, yet the world beats a path under them. Among the 160 faculty and staff members of the College, two professors are listed in the Recruitment Program of Global Talents (“Thousand Talents”) , and two in the Changjiang Scholars Program. There are one winner of National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and four of National Young Overseas High-level Talents Introduction Plan. 60% of the total faculty and staff are associate professors or above. The College has been committed to the mission of integrating theory and practice to generate philosophy, and the faculty and staff are both producing reserach results with world-class influence and developing generations of hardworking, responsible, and accomplished talents in the fields of industry management, engineering technology, research and teaching, and even cross-disciplinary study.
History and times have called for greater responsibilities to be shouldered. 2015 marks the beginning of the second fifteen year period for the College new-leap-forward initiative and of the planning for the new century for the discipline. In response to the needs of China’s transport traffic system featuring “integration, intelligence, environment-friendliness, and safety”, a double-pronged strategy of bringing in international top-notch talents and growing internal human resources will be implemented to firmly grasp the opportunity to develop “peak and plateau disciplines”. The two priority disciplines will be ‘endurability and safety of high-frequency and heavy-load transport infrastructure facilities’ and ‘synergy and optimization of megacity integrated transport system in the information context’. Measures such as organizing major research projects, building international joint labs, founding global academic alliances and journals will put in place to further reinforce the disciplinary features of integration and global perspective and the academic features of transparency, big data and sustainability. This College and the discipline will be making new progresses in the international frontiers for global leadership.
Located in the east, We have the whole world in mind; sailing in the same boat, we strive for excellence. We will be dedicated to education and research as always, continue to step up collaboration with experts, scholars, and students home and abroad, reinforce the strength and features of this discipline, promote undergraduate and postgraduate teaching reform so that our domestic and international influence and attractiveness will be enhanced, historical heritage carried on, and glory continued.
Distinguished scholars and talent students in China and abroad are sincerely welcome to join us.
Professor, Dean of College of Transportation Engineering