Instruments are also a backbone, upholding the hope of the future... When measurement is imbued with the warmth of dedication and life, serving the motherland becomes the most sacred glory. On December 22, the release ceremony of the 13th Model of Longjiang was held.
The Publicity Department of the CPC Heilongjiang Provincial Committee decided to confer the title of Model of Longjiang on Jiubin Tan, Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Dean of the Institute of Precision Instrument Engineering of Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), and Director of the Institute of Ultra-Precision Optoelectronic Instrument Engineering of the School of Instrument Science and Engineering (hereinafter referred to as the School of Instrument Science and Engineering). Lan Wang, Member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Heilongjiang Provincial Committee and Director of the Publicity Department, presented the award to Jiubin Tan.
Going forward, I will lead the Innovation Team of Ultra-Precision Measurement and Instruments of HIT to uphold the spirit of 'Challenging Cutting-edge Technologies, Serving the Motherland with Instruments', scale new world heights, and contribute to building China into a world scientific and technological power by 2035! said Jiubin Tan.
Lan Wang Presents the Award to Jiubin Tan
At the release ceremony, Pengcheng Hu, National Leading Talent and Professor of the School of Instrument Science and Engineering of HIT, Junning Cui, National Leading Talent and Professor of the School of Instrument Science and Engineering of HIT, and Di Chang, Associate Professor of the School of Instrument Science and Engineering of HIT, took the stage one after another. With the key words of Striving for Perfection, Striving for National Glory and Sowing the Seeds of Hope, they told stories of Jiubin Tan adhering to his original aspiration and fulfilling his mission on the front line of education and teaching and in the forefront of tackling key scientific and technological problems. Teachers and students of our university watched the ceremony on site and at the centralized viewing venues of the university, drawing inspiration from the role model's deeds and gathering momentum for forging ahead.
Teachers and Students of Our University Watch the Release Ceremony at the University
Junning Cui, Dean and Professor of the School of Instrument Science and Engineering, shared the story of Jiubin Tan focusing on tackling key core technologies at the ceremony and expressed his great excitement. Under the guidance of Professor Tan, we will continue to uphold the original aspiration and mission of 'Challenging Cutting-edge Technologies, Serving the Motherland with Instruments', and make new and greater contributions to building a strong country in education, science and technology, and talent, he said.
Academician Tan's sincere original aspiration of taking national needs as his own responsibility and his dedication to scientific research embody the spirit of educators and scientists that we need to carry forward and inherit! said Guanghui Sun, Vice Dean of the School of Astronautics and Secretary of the Party Branch of Teachers of the Department of Control Science and Engineering. He stated that he would take Academician Tan as an example and inject surging momentum into the construction of a strong country with solid achievements and tangible efforts.
Chunyu Shao, a 2022 PhD candidate of the School of Instrument Science and Engineering, is a student of Jiubin Tan. After watching the release ceremony of Model of Longjiang, she felt immense pride and was greatly inspired. We will follow in Mr. Tan's footsteps, delve into scientific research with dedication, dare to scale new heights, and contribute the power of youth to achieving China's high-level technological self-reliance and self-improvement! she said.
Jiubin Tan is the head teacher of Ye Yuan, an undergraduate student of the Class of 2025 at the School of Future Technology. After watching the ceremony, Ye Yuan was filled with profound admiration. He said that Academician Tan has rooted himself in teaching and scientific research for 48 years as if it were a single day, and his heart of serving the motherland is like a shining star, lighting the way for young students to pursue their dreams.
Jiubin Tan
Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Dean of the Institute of Precision Instrument Engineering of Harbin Institute of Technology, and Director of the Institute of Ultra-Precision Optoelectronic Instrument Engineering of the School of Instrument Science and Engineering. He has long been engaged in the research of ultra-precision measurement and instrument engineering in high-end equipment manufacturing, and is a leading figure in China's ultra-precision instrument field. He has established a technical and platform system for the precision and performance control of instrument equipment, broken through a series of core technologies, and successfully developed 4 types of national metrological standard devices and more than 20 types of large-scale ultra-precision measuring instruments, with their precision reaching the international advanced level. He has solved the ultra-precision measurement and precision control problems in the R&D and production of core units of high-precision and advanced equipment for more than 30 major national tasks, significantly improving the precision and performance of such equipment. He took the lead in building China's first R&D and industrialization base for ultra-precision instruments, boosting the development of China's ultra-precision instrument industry. As the first completed person, he has won one First Prize and two Second Prizes of the National Technological Invention Award, and one First Prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award.
A Pure Heart for the Motherland, Shouldering the Mission
Building a Monument in Scientific Research from Scratch
In 1992, shortly after obtaining his doctoral degree, Jiubin Tan faced a major challenge in his life. A key task related to the core basic equipment of the aerospace industry was assigned to HIT, a heavy responsibility weighing a thousand jun. With a tight schedule and unprecedented difficulty, many experts hesitated to take it on. However, when Wenyi Qiang, then Vice President of HIT, approached Jiubin Tan and asked if he could undertake the task, he replied without hesitation: Yes!
Jiubin Tan (First from the Right) During His Studies at HIT
At that time, the research group had only three members, no dedicated laboratory, a borrowed experiment table, and extremely limited funds and equipment. Faced with such difficulties, Jiubin Tan led the team to demonstrate an extraordinary spirit of hard work. To avoid vibration interference, they conducted experiments late at night or in the early morning; when encountering interdisciplinary problems, they invited experts and scholars from various fields to tackle them together; due to limited funds and insufficient equipment, they traveled to Beijing, Shanghai and other places to use external equipment. Members of the research group borrowed tables to draw after students' experimental classes; when students were having classes, they held discussions in the corridor... This is the widely spread entrepreneurial story of Jiubin Tan's Three People, One Table.
After three years of arduous efforts, in 1995, he led the research group to successfully complete the task and developed China's first large-scale cylindricity measuring instrument, filling the domestic gap in this field. In 2006, the project won the First Prize of the National Technological Invention Award, the highest honor for technological invention in China's scientific and technological field, and also the first First Prize of the National Technological Invention Award in HIT's history.
Jiubin Tan did not stop there, but continued to tackle key problems in line with international technological trends. He said, The R&D of large-scale ultra-precision instruments cannot yield results in a short time. We need to endure hardship, have perseverance and tenacity, stick to it for more than ten or even decades, and more importantly, generations of instrument practitioners need to carry on the cause one after another.
Large-Scale Cylindricity Measuring Instrument
Pioneering to Break Barriers
Precision Measurement Upholds the National Backbone
All scientific and technological powers are instrument powers; all manufacturing powers are instrument powers; all quality powers are instrument powers. Precision measurement is like a sharp eye for scientific exploration and an accurate ruler for high-end manufacturing, serving as the cornerstone for a country's development of high-end manufacturing industry. Jiubin Tan has led his team to delve into the field of precision measurement for decades, achieving major breakthroughs in many key fields and successfully solving a series of important problems restricting the development of China's high-end equipment.
Jiubin Tan Conducting Experiments in the Laboratory (First from the Left)
Jiubin Tan led his team to successfully develop China's first 1,500-ton ultra-large ultra-precision air/magnetic array micro-vibration isolation platform. Among the six core technical indicators, five are ahead of the relevant indicators of international authoritative institutions, winning the Second Prize of the National Technological Invention Award. A series of large-scale products have been applied to many national major scientific facilities and key enterprises.
The team successfully developed an ultra-precision surface/subsurface microscopic imaging measuring instrument, breaking through the ultra-precision measurement of heterogeneous and heterostructured surfaces and subsurface ultra-precision measurement for the first time, and built the world's first national reference device for measuring the micro-topography and defects of surface and interface, winning the Second Prize of the National Technological Invention Award.
A series of multi-axis high-speed ultra-precision laser interferometer systems developed by the team won the First Prize of the Heilongjiang Provincial Technological Invention Award and the Gold Award in the first Golden Flint Award China Optoelectronic Instrument Brand List.
Aiming at Cutting-Edge Technologies to Cultivate Talents
Forging the Strategic Force for a Strong Instrument Country
We must integrate the spirit of educators with the spirit of scientists, pursue profound scholarship and be a great teacher, so as to cultivate high-level talents and produce high-level academic achievements. Aiming at the demand for cultivating leading talents in scientific and technological innovation for the construction of a strong instrument country, Jiubin Tan's team put forward the training concept for leading talents in instrument scientific and technological innovation of Feeling Guidance, Interdisciplinary Innovation, Team Collaboration, Practical Training. Relying on world-class disciplines, national major projects and platforms, the team adheres to the characteristic development path of Master + Large Team, Large Platform, Major Project, Great Achievement, and has established a new training system for leading talents in instrument scientific and technological innovation.
Jiubin Tan Guiding Students (First from the Left)
Students trained here are renowned for their strong engineering capabilities and courage to challenge international cutting-edge problems. Most of the nearly 100 master's and doctoral students trained by the team every year enter aerospace units, research institutes and high-tech enterprises, devoting themselves to serving the motherland through science and technology. In 2022, the team's teaching achievements won the First Prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award (Postgraduate) in Higher Education.
Since 2022, Jiubin Tan has taken the initiative to serve as a head teacher at the School of Future Technology of the university. Giving full play to the scientific research advantages of the disciplinary team, he organized young and middle-aged backbone teachers to conduct one-on-one contact with students in the class, adopted an order-based training model, established a project-based education mechanism, and helped cultivate top innovative talents with extraordinary talent training measures. In the class he teaches, two students passed the undergraduate comprehensive design (thesis) defense in their junior year, and the students of the Top Class under his guidance have won more than 10 awards in academic competitions.
Jiubin Tan Having a Face-to-Face Talk with Undergraduate Students
Under the leadership of Jiubin Tan, the team has made unremitting efforts day and night, leaving a series of brilliant achievements: the team now has 1 academician, 7 national leading talents and 13 national young talents, and has won honors such as the National Huang Danian-style Teacher Team of Colleges and Universities, the National Double Leader Party Branch Secretary Studio, the National Youth Civilization, the National Excellent University-Enterprise Tutor Group for the Reform of Outstanding Engineer Training, the Collective May Fourth Youth Medal of Heilongjiang Province, the first batch of Science and Technology Innovation Team of National Ministries and Commissions in Ultra-Precision Measurement and Instruments, and the Science and Technology Innovation Team of the China Instrument and Control Society.
Building a First-Class Discipline
Leading the World in Building a Strong Education Country
The instrument discipline where Jiubin Tan is engaged can be traced back to the Measurement Laboratory in the early stage of HIT's founding in 1920. Under the leadership and layout of Jiubin Tan, the discipline has always taken serving the construction of a strong education country as its goal, integrated moral education into the whole process and full cycle of scientific research and teaching, and constantly demonstrated the mission of cultivating talents for the Party and the motherland. In the Soft Science World's First-Class Discipline Rankings, HIT's instrument discipline has ranked first in the world for 9 consecutive years. In the 2025 Soft Science Best Chinese Discipline Rankings, HIT's instrument discipline ranks first in the Instrument Science and Technology discipline.
Jiubin Tan Guiding Students (First from the Right)
The discipline has obtained more than 600 authorized Chinese invention patents in the field of ultra-precision measurement, and has taken the lead in or participated in the formulation of more than 40 international, national and industrial standards. Among them, Professor Jian Liu took the lead in formulating an ISO international standard, which is the first time that China has taken the lead in formulating an ISO international standard in the instrument field.
The discipline has published more than 1,000 academic papers in top journals such as Science and Nature, and 8 achievements have been selected into the Top 10 Scientific and Technological Progresses of Chinese Universities, the Top 10 Optical Progresses of China, the Top 10 Social Influence Events in China's Optical Field, and the List of Pilot Technologies of the China Association for Science and Technology, among others.
A large number of ultra-precision instruments with precision reaching the nanometer, sub-nanometer and even picometer level have been developed in the instrument discipline, equipping the major high-precision national strategic equipment with eyes.
Having hosted 13 sessions of the International Symposium on Engineering Measurement and Instrumentation and 4 sessions each of the International High-Level Forum on High-End Measuring Instruments and the International High-Level Forum on Microscopic Instruments in succession, the international influence of HIT's instrument discipline has been continuously enhanced.
Jiubin Tan Guiding Students (First from the Right)
Rooted in Longjiang, Adhering to the Original Aspiration
Serving the Motherland with Instruments and Writing the Mission of the Times
With a profound Longjiang complex, Jiubin Tan has politely declined warm invitations and favorable conditions from many places, and chose to settle in Harbin to build the National Metrology and Testing Center for High-End Equipment Industry, boosting the development of high-end manufacturing and strategic emerging industries in Longjiang.
He led his team to actively cooperate with leading enterprises in the province to tackle key problems, carrying out a total of 9 scientific research cooperation projects in the past five years with a total research fund of more than 11 million yuan, injecting innovative vitality into the development of Longjiang.
In the past five years, more than 50 master's and doctoral graduates guided by the team have chosen to stay in Longjiang, continuing to contribute the strength of HIT's instrument discipline to the revitalization of Northeast China and Longjiang. The team's deeds have been widely reported by central media such as Xinhua News Agency and Guangming Daily.
Although nearly 70 years old, Jiubin Tan still sticks to the front line of scientific research, working all year round with undiminished enthusiasm. He is a loyal practitioner of the spirit of educators and scientists, contributing to the goal of supporting China's precision to lead the world, and continuing to write a brilliant chapter in the picture of education and scientific research in Longjiang.
