National University of Defense Technology

The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) is a military university directly under the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China, headquartered in the Kaifu district of Changsha, Hunan, and rated at corps level within the People's Liberation Army.中国人民解放军国防科技大学（国防科技大学）是直属中央军事委员会的军队综合性大学，本部位于湖南省长沙市开福区，在解放军序列中为正军级单位。

Its predecessor, the PLA Military Academy of Engineering, opened in Harbin on 1 September 1953 as one of the 156 key projects of China's First Five-Year Plan, moved its main body to Changsha in 1970, and was reconstituted under its present name on 1 October 1978.其前身中国人民解放军军事工程学院 1953 年 9 月 1 日在哈尔滨开学，是中国第一个五年计划 156 项重点工程之一；1970 年主体南迁长沙，1978 年 10 月 1 日改建为今名。

NUDT sits in the 301-400 band of the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2026, was not listed in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027 or the QS World University Rankings 2027, and does not appear in the U.S. News Best Global Universities list for 2026-2027.国防科技大学在 2026 年软科世界大学学术排名中位列第 301-400 名区间，未进入 2027 年泰晤士高等教育世界大学排名与 2027 年 QS 世界大学排名，也未进入 2026-2027 年度 U.S. News 全球大学榜单。

History

• On 18 March 1952 the acting chief of staff Nie Rongzhen and the deputy chief of staff Su Yu submitted a report to Mao Zedong proposing a military engineering academy, and Mao approved it on 26 March 1952 as one of 156 national construction projects.1952 年 3 月 18 日，代总参谋长聂荣臻与副总参谋长粟裕向毛泽东呈送《关于成立军事工程学院的报告》；毛泽东于 1952 年 3 月 26 日批示同意，该校由此成为 156 项国家重点工程之一。
• Zhou Enlai wrote to Nikolai Bulganin, deputy chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers, on 3 June 1952 asking for advisers and experts to build the academy at the scale of five departments, and the first Soviet advisory group reached Harbin on 13 May 1953.1952 年 6 月 3 日，周恩来致函苏联部长会议副主席尼古拉·布尔加宁，请苏方按五个系的规模派遣专家和顾问；1953 年 5 月 13 日，首个苏联顾问团抵达哈尔滨。
• More than 300 Soviet specialists worked on the academy in its early years, a connection that ended when Moscow withdrew all of its experts on 15 August 1960, during the split between the two countries.建院初期先后有 300 多位苏联专家参与建设，这一合作在 1960 年 8 月 15 日苏方于中苏关系破裂中撤走全部专家后终止。
• Mao appointed the Grand General Chen Geng as the academy's first president on 11 July 1952, and a preparatory committee of ten officers opened an office at 59 Gongjian Alley in Beijing on 1 September 1952.1952 年 7 月 11 日，毛泽东任命大将陈赓为院长；由十名军官组成的筹备委员会于 1952 年 9 月 1 日在北京市恭俭胡同 59 号开始办公。
• On 24 November 1952 the Central Military Commission ordered units across the PLA to transfer 300 teaching assistants and 1,000 cadets to the new academy, which also drew cadres from the Third Army Corps and the Southwest Military Region's Second Advanced Infantry School.1952 年 11 月 24 日，中央军委向全军下达为学院抽调 300 名助教和 1000 名学员的指示，其干部基础还包括志愿军第三兵团与西南军区第二高级步兵学校的人员。
• Construction began on 25 April 1953 after the Central Military Commission placed the academy under the direct leadership of its headquarters on 21 February 1953, and Mao capped the annual graduating class at 800 on 15 May 1953.1953 年 2 月 21 日中央军委命令学院隶属军委各总部直接领导；1953 年 4 月 25 日基建动工，同年 5 月 15 日毛泽东批示学院每年毕业学员以 800 人为限。
• The Military Academy of Engineering opened on 1 September 1953 with six departments, five faculties for the air force, artillery, navy, armour and engineers, 22 specialised colleges and 24 undergraduate majors.军事工程学院 1953 年 9 月 1 日开学，下设 6 个部、空军工程系等 5 个系、22 个专科与 24 个本科生专业。
• The curriculum was lengthened to five years in September 1955, graduate classes began the same year under provisional regulations, and a missile engineering department was created in December 1958.1955 年 9 月学院学制改为五年，同年依据《研究生班暂行条例（草案）》开始招收研究生；1958 年 12 月又成立导弹工程系。
• From 1959 the academy was broken up: the artillery faculty left for Wuhan in June 1960 to form the PLA Artillery Engineering Institute, the armoured and engineer faculties moved to Xi'an in 1961, and the chemical defence faculty went to Changchun.自 1959 年起学院陆续分建：炮兵工程系 1960 年 6 月迁往武昌组建炮兵工程学院，装甲兵与工兵两系 1961 年迁往西安，原子化学防护系则迁往长春。
• On 1 January 1966 the academy left the military establishment and became the Harbin Institute of Engineering under the Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, a change that had been postponed from the previous autumn with Zhou Enlai's agreement.1966 年 1 月 1 日起，学院退出军队序列，改称哈尔滨工程学院，仍归国防科学技术委员会领导；这项改制原定更早执行，后经周恩来同意推迟。
• In 1970 the main body, including the central administration and four departments, moved to Changsha and was renamed the Changsha Institute of Technology, while the air force department went to Northwestern Polytechnical University and the shipbuilding department stayed in Harbin to become the Harbin Shipbuilding Engineering Institute.1970 年学院主体连同院直机关和 4 个系内迁长沙，更名长沙工学院；航空工程系并入西北工业大学，舰船工程系留在哈尔滨，后发展为哈尔滨船舶工程学院。
• The nuclear engineering department was moved to Beibei in Chongqing to form the Chongqing Institute of Technology, and the wind tunnel laboratory was turned into a separate aerodynamics research institute.原子工程系迁往重庆北碚组建重庆工业大学，风洞实验室则改为独立的风洞研究所。
• After Deng Xiaoping returned to office in 1975 he asked the defence science commission to plan a defence technology university on the Changsha base, and in July 1977 he received its leaders at home and approved the scheme.1975 年邓小平复出后即指示国防科委以长沙工学院为基础筹办国防科技大学；1977 年 7 月，他在家中接见学院负责人，同意了这一方案。
• The State Council and the Central Military Commission issued the founding notice on 6 June 1978, and NUDT formally came into being on 1 October 1978 at corps level, with serving officers as staff and students who neither wore uniform nor enlisted.1978 年 6 月 6 日，国务院、中央军委下达成立通知；1978 年 10 月 1 日学校正式成立，执行兵团级职权，教职工为现役军人，学生不穿军装、不入伍。
• The State Council named NUDT one of 14 universities earmarked for priority construction in September 1984, and the university set up one of China's first graduate schools on 30 January 1985.1984 年 9 月，国务院批准 14 所大学为重点建设院校，国防科技大学名列其中；1985 年 1 月 30 日，学校成立研究生院，为全国首批试办研究生院的院校之一。
• In 1989 the Central Military Commission brought the university back into the military academy establishment and gave it the task of training senior engineering officers for the whole army, and in 1995 it passed to the General Staff Department with military academy diplomas replacing civilian ones.1989 年 6 月，中央军委决定将学校列入军队院校编制序列，任务改为为全军培养高级专业工程技术人才；1995 年学校划归总参谋部管理，毕业文凭也改为军事院校文凭。
• NUDT joined Project 211 in 1996, absorbed the Changsha Artillery College, the Changsha Engineering Corps College and the Changsha Political College in June 1999 to become one of five comprehensive military universities at deputy theatre level, and in 2004 became the only military institution in Project 985.学校 1996 年进入「211 工程」，1999 年 6 月并入长沙炮兵学院、长沙工程兵学院与长沙政治学院，成为全军 5 所综合大学之一，执行副大军区级职权；2004 年又成为军队唯一进入「985 工程」的院校。
• The Yinhe-I of 1983 ran at 100 million floating-point operations per second, the Yinhe-II of 1992 reached one billion, and the Yinhe-III of 1996 reached 13 billion, establishing the university's supercomputer line.1983 年研制的「银河-I」运算速度为每秒 1 亿次浮点运算，1992 年的「银河-II」达到每秒 10 亿次，1996 年的「银河-III」达到每秒 130 亿次，奠定了该校的超级计算机谱系。
• The Tianhe-1 was ranked fifth in the world on the TOP500 list at the SC09 conference in Portland in 2009, and its upgrade Tianhe-1A, rated at 2.57 petaflops, took first place in October 2010.「天河一号」在 2009 年波特兰 SC09 大会发布的 TOP500 榜单上名列世界第五；其升级型「天河-1A」运算速度达每秒 2.57 千万亿次，于 2010 年 10 月登顶。
• Tianhe-2 held the world's fastest position from 2013 until 2016, when the Sunway TaihuLight overtook it, and the upgraded Tianhe-2A reached 61.44 petaflops.「天河二号」自 2013 年起保持世界第一，直到 2016 年被「神威·太湖之光」超越；升级后的「天河-2A」运算速度达到每秒 61.44 千万亿次。
• In 2015 the United States Department of Commerce added NUDT to its Entity List, which requires American suppliers to obtain a licence before exporting listed technology to the university.2015 年，美国商务部将国防科技大学列入实体清单，美国供应商向该校出口清单所列技术前须先取得许可证。
• In the 2017 military reform NUDT was rebuilt from the former university together with the PLA College of International Relations, the PLA College of National Defense Information, the PLA Xi'an Telecommunication College, the PLA College of Electronic Engineering and the meteorology and oceanography college of the PLA University of Science and Technology.2017 年深化国防和军队改革中，学校以原国防科学技术大学为基础，并入中国人民解放军国际关系学院、国防信息学院、西安通信学院、电子工程学院以及理工大学气象海洋学院，重建为国防科技大学。
• Xi Jinping presented the military flag at the Bayi Building ceremony on 19 July 2017, and the rebuilt university kept its headquarters in Changsha with colleges in Nanjing, Wuhan and Hefei.2017 年 7 月 19 日，习近平在北京八一大楼向国防科技大学授军旗；重建后的学校本部仍设长沙，内设学院分布于南京、武汉、合肥等地。
• In August 2023 the foreign languages college of the PLA Information Engineering University was transferred to NUDT, forming a Luoyang campus that was later reorganised into the university's College of Foreign Languages.2023 年 8 月，战略支援部队信息工程大学外国语学院整体移交国防科技大学，对外称国防科技大学洛阳校区，其后重组为学校的外国语学院。
• In May 2025 the Central Military Commission decided to build an Information Support Force Engineering University in Wuhan on the basis of NUDT's College of Information and Communication and the Ground Force Engineering University's communications non-commissioned officers school.2025 年 5 月，中央军委决定以国防科技大学信息通信学院和陆军工程大学通信士官学校为基础，组建信息支援部队工程大学，校本部设在武汉。

Academics

• The university is organised into 11 colleges running more than 40 departments, institutes and laboratories, among them four national key laboratories and one key laboratory of the Ministry of Education.学校下设 11 个学院，辖 40 多个系、研究所和实验室，其中包括 4 个国家级重点实验室和 1 个教育部重点实验室。
• The colleges are Science, Computer Science, Electronic Science, Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Intelligence Science, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Science, Foreign Languages, Electronic Countermeasures, Meteorology and Oceanography, and Military and Political Basic Education.11 个学院为理学院、计算机学院、电子科学学院、前沿交叉学科学院、智能科学学院、系统工程学院、空天科学学院、外国语学院、电子对抗学院、气象海洋学院与军政基础教育学院。
• A graduate school and the 63rd Research Institute also sit within the university structure alongside the eleven teaching colleges.除 11 个教学学院外，学校还设有研究生院与第六十三研究所。
• NUDT offers 25 undergraduate subjects, 112 master's programmes, 69 doctoral programmes and 11 post-doctoral research stations, and it was among the first institutions authorised by the State Council to award master's and doctoral degrees.学校开设 25 个本科专业、112 个硕士学科专业、69 个博士学科专业，设有 11 个博士后科研流动站，并且是国务院首批批准有权授予硕士、博士学位的院校之一。
• Open-source reference figures, which the university does not regularly update, put the faculty at more than 2,000, of whom over 300 are professors, and full-time enrolment at about 14,000, including 8,400 undergraduates and 5,600 graduate students.公开参考数据（校方并不定期更新）显示，学校有教员 2000 余人，其中教授 300 余人；全日制在校生约 1.4 万人，含本科生 8400 人、研究生 5600 人。
• The graduate school founded in 1985 made NUDT one of the small group of Chinese universities that trained doctoral students before the mass expansion of postgraduate education in the 1990s.1985 年成立的研究生院，使学校成为 1990 年代研究生教育大扩张之前少数培养博士生的中国高校之一。
• Research strengths described in public sources follow the college structure and include supercomputing, aerospace and aerodynamics, information and communication, electronic countermeasures, meteorology and oceanography, and systems engineering.公开资料所述的科研强项与学院设置相呼应，包括超级计算、航空航天与空气动力学、信息与通信、电子对抗、气象海洋以及系统工程。
• The College of Military and Political Basic Education delivers the political theory and military foundation courses that cadets take before specialising in a technical discipline.军政基础教育学院承担政治理论与军事基础课程，学员在进入专业技术学习之前须先修完这些课程。
• The 2017 restructuring narrowed the teaching mission to general-purpose technical officers and joint operations support personnel, while keeping the university's existing role in advanced defence research.2017 年重组后，学校的人才培养任务明确为通用专业人才与联合作战保障人才，同时保留原有的国防前沿研究职能。
• In 1962 admissions were switched from organisational recommendation to the national unified examination on Zhou Enlai's instruction, and the number of majors was cut from 64 to 45 in the same year.1962 年，根据周恩来批示，学院招生不再由组织保送，一律参加全国统考；同年专业由 64 个调整为 45 个。
• The 1964 campaign to study the Guo Xingfu teaching method produced the academy's own model instructor, Zhang Jinhui, whose classroom practice was held up for the whole institution.1964 年学院开展学习郭兴福教学法，树立了本校的先进典型张金槐，其课堂教法在全院推广。
• A 1986 reorganisation renamed the materials and fuels department as materials science and applied chemistry, and the precision machinery department as precision machinery and instruments, while the aerospace, applied physics and electronics departments each acquired an attached research institute.1986 年，材料燃料系改称材料科学与应用化学系，精密机械系改称精密机械与仪器系，航天技术、应用物理与电子技术三系则各自兼设研究所。
• Because of its military character, public information about the university's laboratories and research output is limited, and much of its work is never submitted to open bibliometric databases.由于军事属性，外界对其实验室与科研成果的了解相当有限，许多工作也从不进入公开的文献计量数据库。
• Undergraduate teaching runs for five years in several engineering majors, a length inherited from the 1955 reform and extended to five and a half years for some specialties in 1959.部分工程类本科专业学制为五年，这一安排源自 1955 年的学制改革，1959 年少数专业又延长至五年半。
• The university's four national key laboratories give it standing in the defence research system that is separate from its position in international rankings.学校的 4 个国家级重点实验室使它在国防科研体系中占有独立于国际排名的地位。

Campus

• The main campus occupies 373 hectares, or 922 acres, in the urban area of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province in south-central China.学校主校区位于中国中南部的湖南省省会长沙市区，占地 373 公顷，合约 922 英亩。
• Before the 2017 reform the university was spread over four compounds in Changsha, of which No. 1 at 109 Deya Road in Kaifu district was the headquarters.2017 年改革前，学校在长沙分设四个院区，其中位于开福区德雅路 109 号的一号院为校本部。
• No. 2 compound at 1186 Xinkaipu Road in Tianxin district was the site of the former Changsha Artillery College, and No. 3 at 1 Fuyuan Road in Kaifu district belonged to the former Changsha Engineering Corps College.位于天心区新开铺路 1186 号的二号院是原长沙炮兵学院校址，位于开福区福元路 1 号的三号院则是原长沙工程兵学院校址。
• No. 4 compound at 869 Furong Middle Road in Tianxin district was the campus of the former Changsha Political College, the third institution merged into NUDT in 1999.位于天心区芙蓉中路 869 号的四号院是原长沙政治学院校址，该校也是 1999 年并入国防科技大学的三所院校之一。
• When the main body left Harbin in 1970 it handed over more than 640,000 square metres of buildings and nearly 100,000 items of furniture to the Heilongjiang Military District, and the Changsha quarters it moved into had belonged to a bridging regiment.1970 年主体撤离哈尔滨时，原有 64 万多平方米校舍和近 10 万件营具全部移交黑龙江省军区；南迁后使用的营房则原属舟桥八十四团。
• After 2017 the university's colleges are distributed beyond Changsha, with units in Nanjing, Wuhan and Hefei, a footprint that reflects the five institutions merged in that year.2017 年之后，学校的内设学院分布超出长沙，在南京、武汉、合肥等地均有办学单位，这一格局直接来自当年并入的五所院校。
• The 2023 transfer of the foreign languages college added a campus in Luoyang, Henan, which the university lists as its Luoyang campus.2023 年外国语学院的移交又带来河南洛阳校区，学校对外称其为洛阳校区。
• The estate is therefore a composite of several institutional histories, from the 1953 Harbin academy to the artillery, engineer and political schools rebuilt in Changsha after 1978.因此校园本身是多个机构历史的叠加，从 1953 年的哈尔滨军事工程学院，到 1978 年后在长沙恢复重建的炮兵、工程兵与政治三校。
• The Changsha headquarters sits in the built-up north of the city in Kaifu district rather than on a suburban greenfield site, and the four pre-2017 compounds are scattered across Kaifu and Tianxin.长沙校本部位于城北开福区的建成区内，而非郊外的新建园区；2017 年前的四个院区则分布于开福与天心两区。

Reputation

• ARWU 2026 placed NUDT in the 301-400 band, its only appearance among the four global rankings tracked here.2026 年软科世界大学学术排名将国防科技大学列入第 301-400 名区间，这是该校在本文所列四大全球榜单中唯一的上榜记录。
• The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027 and the QS World University Rankings 2027 do not list the university, and it is absent from the U.S. News Best Global Universities list for 2026-2027.2027 年泰晤士高等教育世界大学排名与 2027 年 QS 世界大学排名均未收录该校，2026-2027 年度 U.S. News 全球大学榜单中也没有它的位置。
• Chinese media and academic commentary have long called NUDT the Military Tsinghua, a comparison with Tsinghua University that signals its standing among science and engineering institutions.中国媒体与学界长期称国防科技大学为「军中清华」，这一与清华大学的类比标示出它在理工类院校中的地位。
• In a 2016 Chinese university ranking it was one of only four institutions rated seven-star, alongside Peking University, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.在 2016 年的一项中国大学排名中，它与北京大学、清华大学、中国科学院并列，成为仅有的四所「七星」院校之一。
• Its military character limits what can be published about the university, and the lack of accurate rankings has been attributed to the small public footprint of a defence institution.军事属性限制了外界对它的了解，缺乏准确排名也被归因于国防院校极低的公开度。
• Between 1953 and 1966 the Military Academy of Engineering enrolled only 13 cohorts, yet more than 40 of its alumni became academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Chinese Academy of Engineering.1953 年至 1966 年间，军事工程学院只招收了 13 届学员，但其校友中当选中国科学院或中国工程院院士者达 40 余人。
• More than 200 alumni of the same period were commissioned as general officers, and graduates went on to staff the country's nuclear, space, supercomputer and naval programmes.同一时期还有 200 余名校友被授予将官军衔，毕业生广泛进入核工业、航天、超级计算机与海军装备等领域。
• The university's alumni are associated with the two bombs and one satellite programme, manned spaceflight, lunar exploration, nuclear-powered submarines, guided-missile destroyers and stealth fighters.该校校友参与了「两弹一星」、载人航天、探月工程、核动力潜艇、导弹驱逐舰与隐形战斗机等尖端国防工程。
• Tianhe-2 made the university the home of the world's fastest supercomputer from 2013 to 2016, a position Tianhe-1A had briefly held in 2010.「天河二号」使学校在 2013 年至 2016 年间拥有世界最快的超级计算机，而「天河-1A」早在 2010 年就曾短暂占据这一位置。
• The 2015 Entity List designation by the U.S. Department of Commerce marked the university out as one of the Chinese institutions whose access to American technology Washington restricts.2015 年美国商务部的实体清单认定，使该校成为华盛顿限制获取美国技术的中国机构之一。
• Xi Jinping's 2017 instruction described NUDT as a high ground for training new-type military talent and for independent defence technology innovation, language the university now uses in its own presentations.习近平 2017 年的训词称国防科技大学是高素质新型军事人才培养高地与国防科技自主创新高地，这一表述此后也出现在学校自己的介绍中。

Student life

• Students at NUDT are officer cadets in a military academy rather than ordinary undergraduates, and the founding regulations of 1978 specified that students neither wore uniform nor enlisted while staff were serving officers.国防科技大学的学生是军事院校的学员而非普通本科生；1978 年建校时的规定明确，教职工为现役军人，学生不穿军装、不入伍。
• Since 1995 graduates have received military academy diplomas rather than the civilian degrees issued by the Ministry of Education, a change that followed the transfer to the General Staff Department.1995 年划归总参谋部管理后，毕业生文凭由教育部颁发的普通高校文凭改为军事院校文凭。
• The 1999 merger brought the cadet bodies of the artillery, engineering corps and political academies into one university, each housed on its own compound in Changsha.1999 年三校并入后，炮兵、工程兵与政治三所学院的学员并入同一所大学，仍分别驻于长沙的各处院区。
• The 1977 intake of 582 undergraduates, admitted through the national college entrance examination restored that year, formed the first undergraduate cohort of the institution that became NUDT.1977 年恢复高考后，长沙工学院录取的 582 名本科生于是年开学，成为后来国防科技大学的首届本科学员。
• Political theory and military foundation courses are taught by the College of Military and Political Basic Education before cadets move into their engineering specialisms.学员在进入工程专业学习之前，先由军政基础教育学院讲授政治理论与军事基础课程。
• Training covers all service branches: the 1953 academy ran separate faculties for the air force, artillery, navy, armour and engineers, and the rebuilt university prepares officers for joint operations support.培训覆盖各军兵种：1953 年的学院即分设空军、炮兵、海军、装甲兵与工兵五系，重建后的大学则面向联合作战保障培养军官。
• Graduate students work through the graduate school founded in 1985 and the 11 post-doctoral stations, drawing on the same laboratory system as the undergraduate colleges.研究生通过 1985 年成立的研究生院和 11 个博士后科研流动站开展研究，所用实验室体系与本科生院系相同。
• Because teaching is organised in Changsha, Nanjing, Wuhan, Hefei and Luoyang, students may complete their degrees at colleges far from the Hunan headquarters.由于教学分布于长沙、南京、武汉、合肥与洛阳，学员可能在与湖南校本部相距甚远的学院完成学业。

Notable people

• Chen Geng, a Grand General of the PLA, was appointed the first president in July 1952 and led the Military Academy of Engineering until his death in March 1961.大将陈赓于 1952 年 7 月出任首任院长，主持军事工程学院工作直至 1961 年 3 月去世。
• Liu Juying, a major general, succeeded Chen Geng as president in July 1961 and stayed in post through the conversion to the Harbin Institute of Engineering in 1966.少将刘居英 1961 年 7 月接任院长，任职至 1966 年学院改为哈尔滨工程学院之时。
• Zhang Yan served as the first president of NUDT proper from September 1978 to December 1983, presiding over the reconstruction of the university in Changsha.张衍自 1978 年 9 月至 1983 年 12 月担任国防科技大学首任校长，主持了学校在长沙的重建。
• Zhang Liangqi, a major general, was president from December 1983 to June 1990, the period in which the university re-entered the military academy establishment.少将张良起于 1983 年 12 月至 1990 年 6 月任校长，任内学校重新列入军队院校编制序列。
• Chen Qizhi, a lieutenant general, was president from June 1990 to February 1994 and had earlier been the first dean of the graduate school from 1985 to 1990.中将陈启智 1990 年 6 月至 1994 年 2 月任校长，此前于 1985 年至 1990 年担任研究生院首任院长。
• Guo Guirong, a major general, led the university from February 1994 to July 1996, after serving as its vice-president and graduate school dean.少将郭桂蓉 1994 年 2 月至 1996 年 7 月执掌学校，此前曾任副校长与研究生院院长。
• Wen Xisen, a lieutenant general, was president from July 1996 to July 2008, the longest tenure of any NUDT president and the period of the Project 985 designation.中将温熙森 1996 年 7 月至 2008 年 7 月任校长，是国防科技大学任期最长的校长，任内学校进入「985 工程」。
• Zhang Yulin, a lieutenant general, was president from July 2008 to June 2011, and Yang Xuejun, also a lieutenant general, held the post from June 2011 until the 2017 reform.中将张育林 2008 年 7 月至 2011 年 6 月任校长，其后中将杨学军自 2011 年 6 月任职至 2017 年改革。
• Deng Xiaogang, a major general and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, became president of the rebuilt university in July 2017 and served until December 2019.少将、中国科学院院士邓小刚于 2017 年 7 月出任重建后的国防科技大学校长，任职至 2019 年 12 月。
• Li Xiang, a major general, succeeded him in December 2019 and led the university through the transfer of its foreign languages college and the creation of the Luoyang campus.少将黎湘于 2019 年 12 月接任校长，任内经历了外国语学院划转与洛阳校区的设立。
• Ci Yungui, a computer scientist who served as vice-president from 1979 to 1985, is associated with the Yinhe series of supercomputers developed at the university.计算机科学家慈云桂 1979 年至 1985 年任副校长，与学校研制的「银河」系列超级计算机联系在一起。
• Ren Xinmin, later a leading rocket engineer, sat on the ten-member preparatory committee that planned the Military Academy of Engineering in 1952.后来成为著名火箭专家的任新民，是 1952 年筹建军事工程学院的十人筹备委员会成员之一。