[Answer] How Is Tsinghua University's Automation Major? How Strong Is Its Faculty?

[Answer] How Is Tsinghua University's Automation Major? How Strong Is Its Faculty?

It is fair to say that Tsinghua University's automation program is one of the very best in China. First of all, in terms of faculty strength, according to publicly available information, the Department of Automation currently has 2 members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Prof. Li Yanda and Prof. Guan Xiaohong), 2 members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (Prof. Wu Cheng and Prof. Dai Qionghai), 40 professors and research fellows, and 32 associate professors and associate research fellows. Among them are 1 Changjiang Distinguished Professor appointed by the Ministry of Education, 12 recipients of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and 13 recipients of the Ministry of Education's New Century Excellent Talents Support Program. With this kind of faculty lineup, it is not just comparable to the same major at other universities—it would be more than enough to rival an entire ordinary university.

In terms of academic structure, the department's first-level discipline is "Control Science and Engineering." In the 2001 national key discipline evaluation, its two second-level disciplines, "Control Theory and Control Engineering" and "Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems," both ranked first in the country. In the two national first-level discipline evaluations in 2006 and 2012, Tsinghua's "Control Science and Engineering" was also ranked No. 1 nationwide. At present, this first-level discipline includes seven second-level disciplines: "Control Theory and Control Engineering," "Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems," "Systems Engineering," "Detection Technology and Automatic Equipment," "Navigation, Guidance and Control," "Enterprise Information Systems and Engineering," and "Bioinformatics." Since these No. 1 rankings were officially recognized at the national level, they are highly persuasive.

In terms of research capability and awards, the Department of Automation has undertaken hundreds of national-level research projects. Of these, 62 reached internationally advanced standards, and 41 were domestic firsts. The department has won 14 national top-tier science and technology awards, 53 provincial- and ministerial-level awards, and secured 62 domestic and international patents. Among these achievements, the project "Optimization Theory and Methods for Discrete Event Dynamic Systems" won the Second Prize of the National Natural Science Award; projects such as "Methods for Geophysical Signal Processing and Recognition and Their Applications" and "Research on ARMA Model Identification and Harmonic Recovery" won the Fourth Prize of the National Natural Science Award. Projects such as "Quantitative Analysis of China's Economic Structure in 2000" and "Urban Intelligent Traffic Management, Command, and Control Systems" received the First Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Projects including "A Prediction System for Silicon Content in Blast Furnace Hot Metal Combining Adaptive and Expert Systems," "Software Development and Information Integration for the CIMS Experimental System," "Information Integration and Virtual Product Development Technology for Accelerating Structural Optimization and Upgrading of Textile Machinery Products," and "Research and Application of Intelligent Scheduling and Optimization Technologies for Large-Scale Complex Production Processes" received the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. The project "New Streaming Media Service Technology Based on Network Convergence" won the Second Prize of the National Technological Invention Award, and the project "A New Heat Quantity Indicator and Integrator for Hot Water" won the Third Prize of the same award.

From an academic perspective, the Department of Automation places great emphasis on basic research and applied basic research. In the past three years, it has published 1,732 papers in core journals and international conferences, including 317 papers indexed by SCI. It has also published the textbook series "Information, Control and Systems" and organized the publication of the "Series of Automation Textbooks for Higher Education Institutions Nationwide."

For more detailed information, you can refer to the official introduction and materials on the Department of Automation's website.