NUDT was founded on 1 September 1953 as the People's Liberation Army Military Academy of Engineering or Harbin Military Academy of Engineering under the direct leadership of the Chinese Central Military Commission. Grand GeneralChen Geng was appointed the first President. It was located in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, in Northeastern China, close to the border with the former Soviet Union. The university was founded as the premier military academy of China. It had five departments and one prep department at the time of its founding, including departments of Air Force Engineering, Artillery Engineering, Naval Engineering, Armoring Force Engineering, and Corps of Engineers. The departments of Chemical Warfare and Nuclear Warfare were established later. During the Cultural Revolution, the university was transitioned to the Committee of National Defense Science and Technology, and was renamed Harbin Academy of Engineering in 1966. In 1970, the main body of the university including its central administration and 4 departments moved to Changsha in South-Central China due to the possible war with the Soviet Union, and was renamed Changsha Institute of Technology. Other departments were converted to at least five independent national universities, or taken by other national universities or science research institute. The university's name was changed to People's Liberation Army National University of Defense Science and Technology in 1978 after the Cultural Revolution was over.
Campus
NUDT is located in the urban area of Changsha, capital of Hunan Province in South-Central China, covering a total area of 373 hectares, or 922 acres.
The university consists of 11 colleges administering over 40 departments, institutes and laboratories, four national key laboratories and one key laboratory at the Ministry of Education level. The 11 colleges of the university include:
Currently, NUDT has over 2,000 faculty members, over 300 of whom are professors. There are 14,000 full-time students including 8,400 undergraduates and 5,600 graduates. NUDT offers 25 subjects for undergraduates, 112 programs for master's degree candidates, and 69 programs for PhD candidates. 11 post-doctoral research stations have been authorized on campus.
NUDT supercomputers
; Yinhe-I Yinhe-1 was developed in 1983 as the leading supercomputer in China with a performance level of 100 MFLOPS. ;Yinhe-II Yinhe-II was built in 1992 achieving performance of 1 GFLOPS. ;Yinhe-III Yinhe-II was upgraded to Yinhe-III in 1996 which achieves 13 GFLOPS. ;Tianhe-I Tianhe-I was first revealed to the public on, and was immediately ranked as the world's fifth fastest supercomputer in the TOP500 list released at the 2009 Supercomputing Conference held in Portland, Oregon, on. ;Tianhe-IA In October 2010, Tianhe-IA, an upgraded supercomputer achieving a performance level of 2.57 PFLOPS, was unveiled at HPC 2010 China and ranked as the world’s fastest supercomputer in the TOP500 list. In November 2011, the Tianhe-1A ranked as the second fastest supercomputer in the world on TOP500 after it was surpassed by K Computer by Fujitsu of Japan. ;Tianhe-2 Tianhe-2 was the fastest supercomputer in the world until 2016, when it was surpassed by Sunway TaihuLight at the Chinese National Supercomputing Center. ;Tianhe-2A Tianhe-2A is currently ranked as the world's fourth fastest supercomputer on the TOP500 list, having achieved a performance level of 61.44 PFLOPS
