University of Chinese Academy of Sciences holds opening ceremony for 2026 freshmen

China News Service, Beijing, September 6 (Reporter Sun Zifa) The opening ceremony for the 2026 freshmen of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) was held on September 6 at its Yanqi Lake campus in Huairou, Beijing. Including 519 international students from 67 countries, UCAS welcomed a total of 21,577 new students.

At the opening ceremony, Zhou Qi, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and President of the University of Science and Technology of China, and numerous students shared their interpretation of the connotation of the abbreviation of the school name "National University of Science and Technology" and pointed out that "Guo" represents the great love of the country, "Science" represents scientific and technological innovation, and "Big" represents the spirit of the university.

Zhou Qi cited the example of Mr. Wu Youxun, the former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who returned from studying abroad to serve the motherland. In 1925, 28-year-old Wu Youxun studied at the University of Chicago in the United States and completely conquered the academic world with precise experiments on seven different elements. This was the decisive experiment to prove that light is particle-like and directly promoted the development of quantum mechanics.

In 1926, Wu Youxun resolutely returned to China where the warlords were fighting. He only said one sentence: "After all, I am a Chinese." After that, he devoted himself to the scientific and technological construction of the impoverished motherland and devoted himself to the cause of saving the country through science and technology.

Wu Youxun returned to his motherland and built China's first modern physics laboratory. He stepped onto the podium and sowed the seeds for the cause of "two bombs and one satellite". Wang Ganchang, Zhao Jiuzhang, Qian Sanqiang, Deng Jiaxian and other "two bombs and one satellite" founders were all his students. The return of Wu Youxun led a generation to the rise of the country, realizing his grand ideal of saving the country through science and technology and serving the country through science and technology.

Zhou Qi hopes that students will cherish the great love of the country that Wu Youxun and other older generation scientists have condensed into the triple meaning of national integrity, feelings of family and country, and international perspective. “This is our precious wealth, and it is also the historical glory bestowed upon the people of the National University of Science and Technology in the new era.”

Regarding technological innovation, Zhou Qi pointed out that 2026 is the centenary of the birth of Mr. Yu Min, the founder of the "two bombs and one satellite". In January 1961, Yu Min received the task of switching from atomic nuclear theory research to participating in pre-research on hydrogen bomb theory. Without any information to refer to, he led the team to accurately capture the key physical mechanism of the hydrogen bomb's self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction using only a slide rule and an old computer, and independently broke out a path to explore hydrogen bomb theory.

Academician Chen Liquan, who had just won the country's highest science and technology award, saw a button-sized lithium nitride battery during a visit abroad in 1976 at a laboratory open day. He stopped for a long time and thought that China, which was short of oil and gas, would need to develop new science and technology in the future, so he immediately applied. He gave up his professional field of more than ten years and turned to ion dynamics, which was relatively blank in the world. Starting from an abandoned warehouse of the Institute of Physics, he cultivated a large number of top industry talents and built an innovation system in which China's lithium battery industry leads the world today, realizing the ideal of rejuvenating the country through science and technology.

"How can the great love of the country and scientific and technological innovation be sustained? On people, on generations of young people." Zhou Qi said that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has regarded talent cultivation as a basic task from the first day of its establishment. The National University of Science and Technology is rooted in the fertile educational soil of the Chinese Academy of Sciences integrating science and education. It is bathed in the spirit of "two bombs and one satellite" and is located in the core area of ​​the comprehensive national science center. Its campus covers from Beijing to the Chinese Academy of Sciences' research institutes all over the country. It is a truly unique university in the world with no walls or borders.

Zhou Qi revealed that the secretaries of the party committees of the nine branches of the Chinese Academy of Sciences attended the opening ceremony of the National University of Science and Technology for the first time that day, and jointly discussed the collaborative construction of a large campus for the integrated development of educational science and technology talents inside and outside Beijing. The National University of Science and Technology will cultivate talents in unconventional ways and take the lead in solving problems for the country in independently cultivating high-level talents.

“In 2035, our country will become a scientific and technological power.” He hoped that the new students at the National University of Science and Technology will inherit the historical volume of saving the country, serving the country through science and technology, and rejuvenating the country through science and technology that generations of Chinese Academy of Sciences members have devoted their lives to. They will take over the baton from the hands of their predecessors and start a new journey of becoming a scientific and technological power at the National University of Science and Technology.

As a school that opens its doors to the world, the National University of Science and Technology has the largest number of international students studying for doctoral degrees in science from 98 countries and regions on five continents in the country. Zhou Qi hopes that they will succeed in their studies here, meet like-minded partners, make science a bridge between different countries and civilizations, and jointly face scientific challenges related to the destiny of mankind.