The National Engineering Research Center for Inland Waterway Regulation is founded under the joint effort of Chongqing Jiaotong University and Changjiang Waterway Bureau.Since its approval in 2011, the Center, aiming to enhance research on basic theories, innovate engineering technologies, cultivate outstanding talents and serve urgent needs of the country, has set up a technical experts committee led by Wang Guangqian and Ni Jinren, academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as well as Niu Xinqiang and Hu Chunhong, academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. It currently staffs nearly 120 R&D personnel either elected as national candidates for the One Hundred, One Thousand, and Ten Thousands of Talent Program or awarded as National Excellent Teachers. At present, the Center has set up one experimental base for national talent cultivation mode innovation and one demonstration base for cultivating innovation talents for the transportation industry under the Ministry of Transport.

The Center is working on five featured and advantageous research fields including waterway regulation in mountainous areas, design and construction of inland ports, intelligent waterway regulation, etc. and has achieved eight core achievements including “the technology of regulating continuous rapids”, with the research achievements published on Nature Communications. The Center has won one second prize of National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology and dozens of provincial and ministerial prizes. Among the thirty-four institutions subject to acceptance and review by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2014, the Center was accepted and approved in the second place. Technical achievements of the Center have been applied to more than 150 inland waterway engineering projects. Their market share has accounted for more than 80% in the fields of waterway regulation in mountainous areas, construction of navigation hubs and ports and piers with large water-level fluctuations, and bridge collision protection as well as consultation and demonstration for inland navigation of major projects. The Research Report on the New Three Gorges Channel proposed by the Center was personally commented on by Premier Li Keqiang, which will play a vital role in implementing the state’s Yangtze River Economic Zone and building a navigation center upstream of the Yangtze River.