Northeastern University (NEU) was founded on April 26, 1923, and is a university with a glorious tradition of patriotism. From August 1928 to January 1937, General Zhang Xueliang, a famous patriotic general, served concurrently as its president. After the September 18th Incident in 1931, NEU was forced to relocate and run its schools in exile. In March 1949, Shenyang Institute of Technology was established on the basis of the College of Engineering and part of the College of Science of NEU. In August 1950, it was renamed Northeast Institute of Technology. In March 1993, it resumed its original name of Northeastern University. In January 1997, the former Shenyang Gold College merged into NEU. In September 1998, it was transferred to be directly under the Ministry of Education. The university is among the first group of key universities under the national "211 Project" and "985 Project". In September 2017, it was listed as a world-class university construction university.

Over nearly a century of education, NEU has always advanced in tandem with national development and national rejuvenation, fostering the university motto spirit of "Striving endlessly for improvement, combining knowledge and action as one". Historically, teachers and students of NEU were the main force and vanguard of the December 9th Movement. During the construction period, the university successively developed a large number of high-level scientific research achievements, including China's first analog electronic computer, the first domestic CT scanner, the first super steel, as well as new technologies for vanadium-titanium magnetite smelting, energy-saving theories and technologies for the iron and steel industry, controlled rolling and controlled cooling technologies, and hybrid intelligent optimal control technologies. It also established the first university science park in China, forming its own school-running characteristics in technological innovation, transfer, and industry-university-research cooperation.

NEU is located in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, the central city of Northeast China, and runs Northeastern University at Qinhuangdao in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province. The university covers a total area of 2.55 million square meters, with a building area of 1.8 million square meters. It currently has 4,473 faculty and staff members, including 2,792 full-time teachers. There are 5 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and 4 foreign academicians. A total of 114 scholars have been selected into national-level talent programs, 53 into national-level young talent programs, 102 into the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of the Ministry of Education, and 4 innovation groups have been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The university houses more than 100 research institutions, including 10 national-level scientific and technological bases such as state key laboratories and national engineering (technology) research centers. It also has 2 national collaborative innovation centers and 3 Liaoning provincial collaborative innovation centers.

NEU is a multidisciplinary university with engineering as its mainstay, covering philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, science, engineering, management, art and other disciplines. Its engineering discipline ranks among the top 1‰ of ESI worldwide. The university offers 76 undergraduate programs, including 15 national-level characteristic programs and 15 national-level first-class undergraduate program construction sites. It currently has 24 first-level doctoral programs, 121 second-level doctoral programs, 36 first-level master's programs, 183 second-level master's programs, 4 categories of professional doctoral degrees in engineering and 15 categories of professional master's degrees. There are 19 post-doctoral research stations. It boasts 3 first-level national key disciplines, 4 second-level national key disciplines, and 1 national key (cultivating) discipline, covering a total of 16 second-level disciplines. The university has fully released the leading and radiating role of first-class discipline construction, forming a sustainable discipline construction pattern featuring peak leadership, plateau support, excellence promotion, and characteristic driving.

NEU has a total enrollment of over 48,000 undergraduate, master's and doctoral students. Centering on the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, the university has achieved fruitful results in cultivating top innovative talents, renewing teaching concepts, researching teaching methods, and exploring training models. Marked by the Implementation Plan for the Construction of First-Class Undergraduate Education at Northeastern University and the Action Plan for Undergraduate Excellent Education at Northeastern University (2017-2023), significant progress has been made in talent cultivation reform. In the National Evaluation of Discipline Competitions for Ordinary Colleges and Universities from 2015 to 2019, the university ranked 3rd nationwide in the total number of student awards and 10th in the overall score.

Since the 13th Five-Year Plan period, NEU has added 3 national-level teaching achievement awards, been approved for 39 first national-level first-class undergraduate courses, and 7 new engineering research and practice projects of the Ministry of Education. Students have won 358 international awards, 1,677 national-level awards, 1,315 excellent innovation and entrepreneurship projects, and 257 patents in innovation and entrepreneurship competitions. A total of 74 student startup enterprises have been established. The quality of student enrollment, graduate employment rate and employment quality remain at a high level.

Adhering to the research direction of serving national strategies and regional development, the university encourages free exploration, promotes collaborative innovation, steadily improves basic research capabilities, and continuously enhances the competitiveness of technological innovation. Since the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the university has undertaken 6,650 scientific and technological projects of various types, won 214 scientific and technological awards at or above the provincial and ministerial level, including 9 national science and technology awards such as the First Prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award and the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award, and 61 first prizes at the provincial and ministerial level. It has been granted 3,824 national patents, including 3,390 invention patents. A total of 22,559 papers have been included in the three major retrieval systems.

The university has formed unique comparative advantages in technological innovation, technology transfer and achievement transformation, exploring an effective way of integrating government, industry, university, research and application, and realizing the benign interactive development of disciplines, talents, scientific research and industry. NEU has been selected as one of the first pilot demonstration bases for university scientific and technological achievement transformation of the Ministry of Education and one of the top 100 cases of comprehensive innovation reform trials of the National Development and Reform Commission. From 2017 to 2018, it ranked 5th among universities directly under the Ministry of Education in terms of transaction volume of scientific and technological achievement transformation. The university insists on promoting the construction of university science parks facing frontier fields such as new-generation information technology, new materials, life health and interdisciplinary science and technology, laying a new and important foundation for NEU to serve national economic construction and the comprehensive revitalization of the old industrial bases in Northeast China.

Open to the world, NEU has established long-term and stable cooperative relations with 249 universities and research institutions in 37 countries and regions. It has built 5 "Discipline Innovation and Intelligence Introduction Bases for Colleges and Universities", 1 international joint laboratory, 3 Sino-foreign cooperative education programs and 1 Sino-foreign cooperative education institution. It has established the world's first Science and Technology Confucius Institute in Belarus, and set up cross-cultural academic exchange platforms such as the Polish Research Center, Australian Research Center, Goethe Language Center and American Cultural Center. The university has continuously promoted the construction of an internationalized faculty and an internationalized innovative talent training system. Every year, it invites about 600 overseas renowned experts to give lectures or conduct cooperative research, and sends about 1,500 teachers and students to more than 50 countries and regions for overseas exchange programs such as national public sponsorship, scientific research cooperation, joint training and overseas internships. The current number of international students on campus is 845.

Always adhering to the original aspiration of fostering virtue through education and the mission of educating talents for the Party and the country, the university strives to cultivate a new generation of young people who can shoulder the responsibility of national rejuvenation. Led by robust Party building work in the construction of a first-class university, NEU has twice been awarded the "National Advanced Primary-level Party Organization". It has been selected as one of the first 10 "National Party Building Demonstration Universities" for cultivation and construction, one of the first 10 pilot universities for comprehensive reform of "Three-wide Education", one of the first 10 pilot universities for the construction of a "One-stop" student community comprehensive management model, and a pilot unit for the second batch of education media integration construction.

Looking ahead, guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, NEU will continue to follow the school-running principle of "Educating Talents", focus on its school-running goals and positioning, and firmly follow the development path of "innovation-oriented, characteristic-based, and open-ended", making unremitting efforts to build a "world-class university with Chinese characteristics that plays a leading role in China's new-type industrialization".

(Data as of December 2020)