Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU) was founded in Shanhaiguan in 1896. Having been relocated a number of times; it is presently situated in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan Province. It is a key university directly under the administration of the Ministry of Education, and has developed into an engineering-highlighted multi-disciplinary university incorporating science, management, economics, liberal arts and law.
SWJTU covers an area of 169 hectares: the Chengdu campus consists of 76 hectares and the Emei campus 93 hectares . The total area of the school grounds is approximately 670,000 square meters.
With over one hundred years of history, SWJTU has established a complete higher education system consisting of undergraduate, postgraduate, doctorate, continuing education and distance education programs. The university has 11 schools, 38 departments, 32 undergraduate specialties, master's programs in 58 fields, doctorate programs in 24 fields and 6 postdoctoral centers. There are around 23,000 students on campus now, SWJTU has a high-qualified staff with 1,400 teachers, including almost 900 professors and associate professors, 3 members of the Chinese Academy of Science, and 2 members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. There are also more than 100 visiting professors from other educational institutes within and outside China presently employed by the university.
In its 100 years of steady development, SWJTU has cultivated over seventy thousand engineers, technicians and managers; a few of the most notable being Mao Yisheng, Zhu Kezhen and Lin Tongyan. However, may other world-famous experts and scholars, including more than forty academicians of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Chinese Academy of Engineering
have either studied or taught at the university. Furthermore, SWJTU is well known for its rigorous scholarship and has long been considered to be an excellent center of higher education pursued by many young students at home and abroad.
SWJTU is a center of both education and research. It has 3 key disciplines at the state level, and 17 at the ministerial and provincial level. Located at the university are also 16 research institutes and 15 research institutes involved in cross disciplines. Traction Power Lab, the only key state laboratory of the national transportation system, is based at SWJTU. There are also 10 key laboratories at the ministerial level and another 66 teaching and research laboratories. During the "Eighth Five-year Plan", over 180 scientific research projects have won prizes awarded by the state, the province and the Railway Ministry. Over 9,000 research papers have been published in academic journals within and outside the nation. At the end of 2000, the first man-loading high temperature super-conducting maglev test vehicle in the world was born at SWJTU.
(Authorized abstracting from the Web Site of Southwest Jiaotong University: https://www.swjtu.edu.cn)
