Zhejiang University
One of China’s premiere universities, Zhejiang University is deeply rooted on Qiushi Academy and was established back in 1897. It was then the one of the earliest modern academies of higher education in the country. The Quishi Academy, as the university was known then, changed its name several times since 1901, and was even suspended.
In 1927, the Third National sun Yat-Sen University was founded. A year later it was renamed as the Zhejiang University. A month after that it was named as the National Zhejiang University and is composed of three schools: the School of engineering, the School of Agriculture, and the School of Liberal Arts and Science.
The outbreak of the War of Resistance against the Imperial government of Japan forced the school to transfer to Guizhou. During this time, and under the leadership of the country’s famous meteorologist, geologist and educator Chu Kochen, the institution continued to find its way despite the difficulties and adversities of those times, and even earned the nickname the “Oriental Cambridge” by no less than the famous British scholar Joseph Needham.
After the Second World War, the university moved back to Hangzhou. Just two years later, the university became a comprehensive university with 7 schools, 25 departments, 9 research institutes, and a research center that covers Liberal arts, Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Normal Education, Law, and Medicine to name a few.
In 1952, there was a reshuffling of the country’s top universities and colleges, which also saw the restructuring and dissociation of the Zhejiang University. During this time, several institutes upgraded, while others merged with other universities.
In 1958, the university merged with Hangzhou University. The school of agriculture was renamed as Zhejiang College of Agriculture following its separation from the institution, only to be renamed again as the Zhejiang Agricultural University two years after it separated from the university.
In September of 1998, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou University, Zhejiang Agricultural University and the Zhejang Medical University incorporated and are now known as the new Zhejiang University.
Today, the university is geared towards becoming a comprehensive university and with extensive academic capabilities and development of the country’s higher education. The school is under the supervision of country’s Ministry of Education and is jointly supported by the Ministry of Education and Zhejiang Provincial government.
To provide students with the knowledge and capacity to meet the growing demand for technology and advanced science, the university established the Center for Engineering and Scientific Computation in 2002. Here the center aims to emphasize the nature of not just being interdisciplinary but as multidisciplinary as well. Currently, the center dwells more on the energy engineering, geophysics, engineering mechanics, chemical engineering, and computational engineering to mention a few.
The university has also established the Institute of Cyber-systems and Control, where robotics plays a vital role. Here, 863 high performance humanoid robot units and systems were developed.
Among them is Wu and Kong, a pair of table tennis playing humanoid robots whose combined names means Monkey King. The two humanoid robots were developed with high strength lightweight materials, equipped with 30 motors on 30 joints and are capable of moving in several directions.
Wu and Kong, together with WuKong, Wuneng and WUjing, show how advanced robotic technology has become inside the center of Zhejiang University.
