1. Management Science and Engineering

This program was established in 1956 and was recognized as the earliest national key first-level discipline in 2007. It has two National Innovative Research Groups in 2005 and 2020, respectively. It is also the first program in management which has been awarded the National Natural Science Award. At present, with the establishment of the national-level innovation and entrepreneurship demonstration base as well as 5 Provincial and Ministerial-level laboratories, a distinctive research feature of complex system management has been formed, driven by optimization theory, data science, behavioral science and artificial intelligence technology. It serves national key urgent needs such as digital economy, green development and advanced manufacturing.

Through long-term collaborative innovation, the progam has formed a strong teaching team with appropriate distribution in ages. Currently, there are mainly 54 faculty members. More than 200 doctoral students have been cultivated and awarded Ph.D degree from this discipline in the past 5 years.

Over the past 5 years, this program has won two National Science and Technology Progress Awards. It has led over 10 key projects founded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and 3 Key R&D Projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology. It has published more than 40 papers in famous academic journals such as PNAS, Nature sub-press, UTD top journals, AI top journals and top conferences, as well as Chinese top journals such as Journal of Management Science and Management World.

This program continuously expands international exchanges and cooperation, establishing partnerships with dozens of world-class universities and organizations. Every year, it receives international students from various countries all over the world. Through extensive exchanges and cooperation, it has promoted the prosperity and development of the international academic community and broadened the international horizons of students.

2. Applied Economics

This program traces its roots to the Department of Aeronautical Economics established in 1956. It awarded its first master’s programs in International Trade and Finance in 1997 and 2000, respectively. A doctoral program in Financial Engineering was established in 2003. In 2006, a master’s program for the first-level discipline of Applied Economics was set up, adding Quantitative Economics and Statistics. A Master of Finance professional degree program was launched in 2010, followed by master’s and doctoral programs for the first-level discipline of Statistics in 2012. A doctoral program in Energy Economics and Management was introduced in 2017, and finally, a doctoral program for the first-level discipline of Applied Economics was established in 2020. Adhering to the university’s tradition of developing key disciplines for national urgent needs, and supported by two provincial/ministerial-level key laboratories, the discipline has built first-class research platforms and experimental environments, forming a unique advantage of addressing global academic frontiers while serving national urgent requirements. Professors such as Ren Ruoen, Han Liyan, and Fan Ying wield significant influence in the field of applied economics both domestically and internationally. Over the past five years, 20 outstanding young scholars from renowned universities worldwide have been recruited, forming a distinctive faculty with a rational age structure, including 15 doctoral supervisors and 5 national-level talents.

Building on over six decades of foundational development in economics and leveraging the university’s world-class engineering expertise, particularly its leading advantages in information technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, the program integrates systems engineering principles with mathematical economics thinking. It has established strengths in several areas, including Quantitative Economics, Asset Pricing and Financial Market Microstructure, Financial Risk Management, FinTech, Energy, Environment and Climate Economics, and Game Theory and Industrial Organization. The program is committed to building a first-class economics program through interdisciplinary integration, serving major national urgent needs in economic, financial, and energy security.

The program is dedicated to cultivating economics talents with a solid foundation, practical ability, comprehensive quality, innovative spirit, international perspective, and a deep sense of social responsibility. It enjoys a significant advantage in student recruitment, with 70% of its graduate students graduating from top-level universities. In recent years, the program has vigorously promoted general education at the undergraduate level and interdisciplinary training at the graduate level. From undergraduate to doctoral programs, the curriculum strengthens the foundation of applied economics and aligns with world-class economics research and talent development models.

3. Business Administration

The program of Business Administration at Beihang University was established in 1956. Rooted in the local practices of Chinese enterprises, the program focuses on management issues related to national urgent needs and key industries, striving to tell the story of China’s business development. Over the years, it has cultivated a group of distinguished scholars in case study, development, and teaching, forming a distinctive feature of the Business Administration discipline in which practice and theory are interdependent and co-evolve.

In terms of research orientation and distinctive advantages, this program focuses on the transformation of Chinese enterprises in the digital era. By employing case studies and interdisciplinary approaches, it has developed cutting-edge research directions such as digital innovation in Chinese management practices, customer decision-making theories and practices, and innovations in accounting governance. Taking emerging industries such as aerospace and artificial intelligence as contexts, the program has established a unique education model characterized by the mutual advancement of case-based research and teaching.

Through case-based, experimental, and practical teaching, this program aims to cultivate professional, interdisciplinary, and cross-domain leaders and experts, as well as innovative talents with a strong sense of social responsibility. Most students come from large central enterprises, emerging industries, well-known Internet companies, and entrepreneurial firms. The program has produced numerous outstanding mid- and senior-level managers serving in national industrial enterprises such as AVIC and CASC, as well as elites active in leading Internet companies such as Tencent, Baidu, and Huawei.

4. Transportation Engineering

This program focuses on the promising direction of traffic data intelligence and system control, which leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and vehicle-road coordination to investigates complex systems composed of traffic participants, vehicles, infrastructure, environmental factors, and information, while analyzing interactions and inherent patterns between these elements, so as to develop intelligent traffic management plans to achieve comprehensive goals of safe, economical, efficient, green, and scientifically sound control in integrated transportation systems.

This program closely aligns with China’s transportation development status and emerging technological trends. By leveraging multidisciplinary knowledge from multi-source traffic big data, microeconomics, optimization theory, statistics, and artificial intelligence, it constructs a flexible computing framework and collaborative service mechanism for complex spatiotemporal big data. Research focuses on extracting spatiotemporal characteristics of road network operations in complex traffic scenarios, investigating the evolution patterns of traffic congestion bottlenecks and analyzing the complexity and system resilience of transportation network structures, so that to establish a multimodal data-driven active control model for large-scale road network operations. This program also explores traffic flow organization and optimization control technologies of multi-level intelligent vehicle coexistence, while investigates digital twin simulation, complex heterogeneous data correlation computing, and multi-point collaborative targeted control technologies, so as to develop an intelligent management platform of integrated transportation systems for further promotion and application.