NCUST adheres to the reform of innovation and entrepreneurship education and cultivates students’ innovative spirit and practical ability. Over the past five years, about 25,000 students have participated in various competitions at all levels and won more than 4,500 international and domestic awards, including over 2,000 awards at or above the state level. The total number of innovative entrepreneurship training programs for college students has reached 1,922, including 190 at the state level and 286 at the provincial level. Students have published more than 350 academic papers, among which more than 30 have been searched by SCIE and more than 60 have applied for patents. NCUST actively instills the education of innovative consciousness and entrepreneurial spirit “into the classroom, into teaching materials, into credits”, builds high-level Maker Space and Incubation Base successfully incubating more than 240 entrepreneurial projects, and selects more than 100 full-time teachers and out-of-campus mentors giving lectures to students through the Entrepreneur Lecture and the Yisheng Lecture. It is awarded Advanced Unit for the Implementation of National College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (2012-2014) and ranks 120th on the Top300 list of undergraduate students in the Evaluation Results of Innovative Talents Training and Discipline Competition of Chinese Universities (2015-2019).

NCUST persistently carries out the strategy of developing basic research, applied technology research and transfer together with scientific research of national defense industry, upholding the idea of basic study to the utmost, application development to the bottom and cultivating talents by implementing innovation. Over the past five years, the university has won 1 Second Prize of National Technology Invention Award, 2 Second Prizes of National Science and Technology Progress Award and 115 provincial and ministerial scientific research awards. It has undertaken 181 projects from The National Science and Technology Support Program, the National Key Research and Development Program, the National Special Project for International Science and Technology Cooperation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Fund of China with an average annual scientific research fund of nearly 100 million RMB. The university boasts an international level in the fields of energy saving and emission reduction in the steel industry, high quality steel production technology, occupational health and safety, efficient mining and utilization of metal, mineral resources, bimolecular genomics, industrial robotics research and development etc. The university also actively engages in social services and contributes to the province and the national socio-economic development, yielding a series of representative results and establishing 4 industry standards. The genomic informatics team has been actively engaged in international collaborations, publishing 50 papers in world top journals such as Nature, Science and Advanced Materials. NCUST ranks 169th in China and 3rd in Hebei province in the 2019 ranking of science and technology contributions of Chinese colleges and universities released by The Institute for Lande Technology & Education Evaluation at Z-park. Also in 2019, it ranks 159th in ESI world academic level of universities and scientific research institutions, and 4th in Hebei province.

NCUST values the international academic exchanges and cooperation, and has established contacts and cooperative relationships with over 50 high-level universities and institutes of more than 10 countries including University of British Columbia and Georgia Regis University etc., carrying out international exchanges and cooperation in fields of student and teacher exchange, joint education program, joint scientific research and conference organizing. In 2015, the university established the first Confucius Institute featuring Chinese medicine in Central and Eastern Europe, Confucius Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, cooperating with University of Pécs in Hungary. NCUST co-organizes China-Hungary Medical Forum with University of Pécs every two years. It has undertaken 6 China-Hungary intergovernmental science and technology cooperative projects with Hungarian Acupuncture and Moxibustion Rehabilitation Society, University of Szeged and University of Debrecen and 8 other provincial and ministerial-level international scientific and technological cooperation projects. Besides, the university has 3 international scientific research cooperation bases. Approved by the Ministry of Education, NCUST cooperates with Heidelberg University of Applied Sciences in Germany in running undergraduate joint education programs of electrical engineering and automation, mechanical engineering and manufacturing and chemistry program in cooperation with Tomsk State University in Russia.

Standing at a new historical starting point, the century-old university is full of new vitality. NCUST will always adhere to the school philosophy of “cultivating science and technology, advocating the application, relying on industry and serving the regional development”, abide by the school motto of “Remaining virtue and erudite; Being diligent and practical”, implement the development strategy of “establishing the school with characteristics, developing the school by cultivating talents and strengthening the school with high quality”, and comprehensively improve the school’s overall strength and core competitiveness to write a new glorious chapter.