According to the latest Essential Science Indicators (ESI) statistics released by Clarivate Analytics in September 2026, two disciplines of our university— Chemistry and Materials Science — have entered the global top 1% of ESI rankings. This marks another landmark achievement in the university’s discipline development, following Engineering’s sustained presence in the global top 1%. With this milestone, the number of disciplines in the ESI global top 1% has increased to three in our university, representing a huge breakthrough in discipline development.

    This breakthrough is the result of the university’s long-term commitment to advancing the substantive development of its disciplines. Our university has consistently taken discipline development as its overarching priority, anchored to its “Double Upgrade” goals, and continued to optimize its disciplinary layout while strengthening research organization and platform support, with a focus on regional economic development and serving leading industries. In recent years, the university has adopted targeted measures for Chemistry and Materials Science, intensifying efforts to recruit and cultivate high-level talent, improving research evaluation and incentive mechanisms, and driving the sustained production of high-quality outcomes, which has led to a steady rise in disciplinary potential and ultimately this leap forward. At present, our univeristy has eight applied disciplines with distinctive features in Hunan Province and four disciplines supporting leading industries in Hunan Province, with one discipline selected as a “One City, One Industry” discipline (meaning a discipline closely aligned with the leading industry of its host city), demonstrating its growing influence.

    Taking this as a new starting point, our university will advance differentiated discipline development through tiered and categorized management, continue to deepen the substantive development of its disciplines, strengthen performance assessment, further intensify efforts to recruit and cultivate high-level talent and build high-level research platforms, and continuously enhance the core competitiveness of its disciplines.

（Reviewed by Wang Jiayi, Wang Liyang）