On the morning of April 16, 2024, Professor Constantinos Soutis, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) and Professor at the University of Manchester, visited Northwestern Polytechnical University .

During the meeting, Executive Deputy Secretary Cheng Jiwei extended a warm welcome to Professor Soutis and provided a detailed introduction to NPU's history, disciplinary strengths, talent cultivation, and international cooperation. He expressed his hope to fully utilize this face-to-face meeting to foster friendship, discuss cooperation, and open a new chapter of deep and practical collaboration between the two universities.

In his remarks, Professor Soutis first thanked the university for its warm reception. He noted that Xi'an is an ancient city with a long history and profound cultural heritage, and NPU, as a prestigious institution of higher learning in Xi'an and China, is a truly capable university with international influence. He stated that the two universities share many similarities and there is vast potential for cooperation in fields such as mechanical engineering, materials science, and robotics in the future.

Dean Chang Honglong provided a detailed introduction to the school's departments, subject rankings, and research directions. He highlighted that the Mechanical Engineering discipline and the Aeronautical and Astronautical Science and Technology discipline, both national "Double First-Class" construction disciplines, were ranked 6th and 2nd globally respectively in the 2023 ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects. He expressed his anticipation for further strengthening personnel exchanges between the two universities and deepening interactions in areas such as joint talent cultivation and collaborative faculty research, especially given Professor Soutis's status as a leading authority in the international mechanical and materials fields.

Subsequently, Dean Chang Honglong and his colleagues accompanied Professor Constantinos Soutis on a visit to the Department of Microsystems Engineering and the Shaanxi Provincial Engineering Research Center for Digital Specialized Equipment, where they posed for a group photo.