The Industrial Design Department of the School of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern Polytechnical University was formally established in 2002. And it is one of the five professional departments of the School of Mechanical Engineering.

We have a complete “undergraduate-master-doctoral” training system, including two undergraduate majors - Industrial Design and Product Design. The major in Industrial Design is the National First-class Undergraduate Major Construction Site, Major with Special Characteristics of Shaanxi Province, and Main Implementation Major of the Excellent Engineer Training Program of the Ministry of Education. And the major of Product Design is a first-class undergraduate major in Shaanxi Province. We also have master's degree authorization of “Design (original Design Art)” as the first-level discipline, “Industrial Design” and “Industrial Design Engineering” as two second-level disciplines of the master's degree program, a doctoral program of the first-level discipline of "Design", and one second-level discipline doctoral degree authorization of “Industrial Design”. In 2021, Northwestern Polytechnical University - Brand University of Applied Sciences Industrial Design Joint Educational Program was approved by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. The Department of Industrial Design has trained a large number of high-quality talents in the field of industrial design. Our “Shang Tian Ru Hai - Four-dimensional Integration” innovative training system for industrial design talent training has won the second prize in the National Teaching Achievement Award in 2018.

The Department of Industrial Design currently has 25 faculty staff and 2 research staff, including 4 professors (1 member of the Ministry of Education’s Curriculum Steering Committee, 1 member of the Ministry of Education’s Design Discipline Appraisal Group, and 2 Provincial Awarded Teachers), 5 doctoral supervisors, 16 associate professors, 4 lecturers, and 1 experimenter. The current faculty team is with a reasonable distribution of scholars of different ages and innovative spirits.

The Department of Industrial Design takes “Integration, Optimization, Integration, and Innovation” as our slogan, and highlights the characteristic research direction of “Shang Tian Ru Hai”. Our research projects focus on industrial design, ergonomics, engineering graphics, and industry policies of industrial design, withhold a high reputation within the academic field of industrial design domestically. Since the 1990s, we have undertaken dozens of major scientific and technological projects, such as the national “863 project”, the “National Science and Technology Support Program”, the “National Key Research and Development Project”, the “National Natural Science Foundation of China”, and the National Manned Spaceflight and Manned Deep Diving Project. In recent years, we have completed the industrial design tasks of China’s manned spacecraft such as Shenzhou-8, Tiangong-1, and Space Stations. We are also involved in many industrial design projects in the field of manned deep submersibles, aircraft carriers, and ships, and this has attracted widespread attention in China and abroad. Our team published more than 300 scientific articles, obtained more than 200 design patents and software copyrights, and successively won 6 provincial and ministerial science and technology progress awards.

We adopt a highly integrated teaching mode of Industrial- University-Research and actively cooperate with manufacturing companies to carry out industrial design practices and new product research and development services. We established a stable cooperation base in two major economic zones of the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, and Guanzhong High-tech Industrial Belt to create a practical environment for students close to the forefront of the industry. We have completed more than 100 designs and new product development, including Shenzhou spacecraft, Tiangong laboratory and space station, ships, submersibles, machine tool equipment, vehicles, special vehicles, industrial electrical appliances, and medical equipment. Moreover, we established the Northwestern Polytechnical University-Tianjin Dongli District Industrial Design and Research Institute, Northwestern Polytechnical University-Nantong Industrial Design and Research Institute, NTU and Dongguan Yongqiang Special Vehicle Innovation and Research Center, and Ningbo Research Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University. We were involved in the identification of the “National Industrial Design Center” and the “Technical Qualification and Professional Title Assessment for Industrial Designers”, participated in the planning and strategic making of national industrial design and industrial policies, and are one of the main units of the Award Committee of “China Excellent Industrial Design Award”.

The Department of Industrial Design has recruited 28 batches of industrial design undergraduates. Nearly 1,000 students have graduated successfully and worked in multiple fields. The employment rate is above 98%. We have also successfully cultivated more than 100 postgraduates including more than 50 doctoral graduates. Graduates are widely distributed in various design institutes and companies, including ZTE, Huawei, HKUST Xunfei, Haier, Gree, Changhong, TCL, Skyworth, Shanghai Volkswagen, JAC, etc. Others have entered the academic field and become the backbone of the faculty staff of design education in China.

Contact: Lingshe Lu

Tel: +86 029 88491821

Email: vivian_lu@nwpu.edu.cn

Updated March 2023