With the strong support of Tianjin, relying on the resources and discipline advantages of Nankai University, the Artificial Intelligence College of Nankai University was announced to be established on May 11th, 2018. On May 16th, 2018, at the 2nd World Intelligence Conference, the unveiling ceremony of Nankai University Artificial Intelligence College was held.

The Artificial Intelligence College is a professional college established by Nankai University based on the the first-level discipline of control science and engineering, sub-discipline of operational research and cybernetics, and two undergraduate majors incluidng automation, and intelligence science and technology. There is a profound discipline foundation and historical accumulation. In 2004, the undergraduate major in intelligence science and technology was approved by the Ministry of Education. It is one of the first four universities in China to set up the major. With the support of a strong discipline foundation, intelligence science and technology specialty and automation specialty have successively been selected into the national first-class undergraduate specialty construction sites, and the artificial intelligence as a sub-discipline has been established. The college is in a leading position in the domestic research fields of artificial intelligence, intelligent robots, control science, and engineering, etc. It is complete with the earliest intelligent robot theme open network laboratory and robot industrialization base in the national 863 program. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robot Technology, Tianjin Key Field Innovation Team, and Tianjin International Cooperation Base.  Besides, it also contains the Institute of Machine Intelligence personally inspected by former General Secretary Jiang Zemin, as well as the National Virtual Simulation Experimental Teaching Center and Tianjin Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center, which ranked first in the national online assessment. The College of Artificial Intelligence adheres to the construction idea of laying equal stress on algorithm and system, and letting method and application develop side by side. While studying artificial intelligence methods, it focuses on the close combination of various methods with intelligent robots and other systems and strives to improve the intelligence level of robots and other systems with artificial intelligence methods. At the same time, by virtue of the specific needs of intelligent systems, it tries hard to promote the development of artificial intelligence methods, and boost the development of artificial intelligence discipline while serving the national and local economic construction.

The college is located in the Science Section of Nankai University Jinnan Campus. It has two national first-class undergraduate (construction site) teaching Majors of automation and intelligence science and technology, and plans to build the department of intelligent engineering; it has a first-level discipline of control science and engineering, two sub-disciplines of artificial intelligence, operations research, and cybernetics, and a complete discipline structure of the post-doctoral research station, first-level discipline doctoral program, and first-level discipline master program. The college supports experimental teaching with the national virtual simulation experiment teaching center (ranking first in online review together with Tsinghua University in 2015) and Tianjin University experimental teaching demonstration center, supports scientific research with the Institute of Robotics and Information Automation (which is also Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robot Technology), and the Institute of Machine Intelligence, and support research clusterswith the help of these platforms such as intelligent manufacturing and logistics technology research, intelligent service technology verification, and autonomous unmanned system technology verification.

The college has research teams of machine intelligence, intelligent robots, and intelligent predictive control. It is worth mentioning that the College of Artificial Intelligence of Nankai University has two experts among the first batch of think-tank experts in Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, while the national robotics group of the think tank has only 13 experts. The college has a strong academic atmosphere. Every faculty member has a strong sense of responsibility and passion for work. A teaching and research team with young and middle-aged professors as the backbone and young teachers as the new force has been established. There are 48 full-time teachers, 11 professionals engaged in experimental technology, and 15 party and administrative staff. Among them, there are 24 doctoral supervisors, 40 master supervisors, 21 professors, 14 associate professors, and 11 lecturers.

In recent years, the College of Artificial Intelligence of Nankai University has made a number of representative research achievements in intelligent robots: Professor Zhang Juanjuan published the main journal paper in Science as the first author; Professor Zhao Xin completed the world's first batch of 17 robot cloned pigs and was selected as one of the Top Ten Scientific and Technological Progress of China's Intelligent Manufacturing in 2018, and Nankai University is the only selected university; The research results of Key Technologies and System Integration of Intelligent Industry Upgrading Institutions led by Professor Fang Yongchun was selected into Top Ten Scientific and Technological Progress of Intelligent Manufacturing in China in 2019, and Nankai University is the only university that was selected into the top ten scientific and technological progress of intelligent manufacturing in China for two consecutive years; Professor Fang Yongchun's research achievements in underactuated systems won the first prize of the 7th Wu Wenjun Natural Science Award for Artificial Intelligence (currently the only one), the 5th Chen Hanfu Award (the previous four winners of this award are all famous scholars in the field of artificial intelligence) and the first prize of Tianjin Natural Science Award in 2018. It is worth pointing out that Nankai University has been in a leading position in the research of domestic intelligent robots, and it won the second prize of the national technological invention as early as 2002.

The college pays attention to the cultivation of talents, adheres to the people-oriented principle, puts undergraduate teaching at the core of all work, strives to build a first-class undergraduate major, and focuses on cultivating talents. The core specialized courses of undergraduate courses are taught by authoritative professors. Through the measures of one-to-three whole-process academic tutorial system, insisting on research nuturing  teaching and students' all-round three-dimensional professional practice, the comprehensive quality of students can be comprehensively improved, and intelligent talents with a high sense of social responsibility, strong practical ability, and outstanding innovation consciousness can be trained.

In recent years, the College of Artificial Intelligence has made great achievements in talent training and teaching. From 2019 to 2020, the majors of intelligent science and technology and automation were successively approved as the national first-class undergraduate major construction points. In 2020, Fang Yongchun and others won the second batch of new engineering research and practice projects of the Ministry of Education - new engineering specialty reform projects; In 2020, Xu Jing, etc. won the special project of the China Higher Education Association on the construction of school-enterprise double-qualified teachers and the research on the integration mechanism of production and education; In 2019, Liu Jingtai and others won the second prize of teaching achievement of China Automation Society; In 2019, Wang Hongpeng and others won the virtual simulation experiment of UAV intelligent mission planning and the Tianjin virtual simulation experiment teaching project; In 2018, Fang Yongchun and others won the first prize of Tianjin Teaching Achievement. In 2017, they won the first prize of higher education teaching achievement of the China Society of automation. In 2017, their Remote Control Operation Automatic Crane Platform won the silver award of the first Maker Competition for experimental equipment design of young teachers of automation in colleges and universities.

The students in the college have strong abilities in scientific research and innovation, as well as practicey. In 2020, Lu Biao was elected as Chinese University Student of the Year, and in 2019, Lu Biao and others won the national gold medal in the Internet plus Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. In 2019, Zhu Wei and others won the third prize in the 16th Challenge Cup National Undergraduate Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Works Competition; In 2018, Wu Yiming won the 11th China Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award, and in 2018, Yang Tong won the Tianjin 2018 Special Award for University Students' Innovation; In 2017, Wu Yiming and others won the first prize in the 15th Challenge Cup National Undergraduate Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Works Competition. The student research team was selected into the project supported by China Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award Fund - College Students' Xiaoping science and technology innovation team (there are only 50 teams in China); In 2017, led by Feng Duan the college's team won three consecutive championships in the RoboCup held in Japan.

The College of Artificial Intelligence actively strives for various resources inside and outside the school to speed up its construction. Under the primary discipline of control, the secondary discipline of artificial intelligence was set up. In 2018, the characteristic class of artificial intelligence was set up and began to recruit students. In 2019, the postgraduate students of the secondary discipline of artificial intelligence were recruited. In 2020, the secondary discipline and the primary discipline of control were recruited side by side. In 2021, a double-degree course in information and finance was set up.

The college attaches great importance to the guidance of artificial intelligence technology, looks for opportunities to actively serve the main fields of the national economy, and vigorously expands the channels of school-enterprise cooperation, and has formed cooperation intentions with many units. Since its establishment, the college has successively signed cooperation agreements or reached cooperation intentions with IBM, Huawei, Alibaba, Wukong Group, Xintiangang Iron and Steel Group, AWS, Zhongke Intelligent Manufacturing, Qingdao Haiyi College, Army Military Transportation University of PLA, Electronic City, and other well-known enterprises and universities.

The college attaches great importance to international cooperation and has established cooperative relations with the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, and other countries and regions. It has long adhered to a variety of international cooperation methods such as cooperative research, joint training, academic/visit and exchange, and participation in world competitions. In recent years, the college has successively signed cooperation agreement on the exchange program with the Central Institute of Technology in Nantes, France, and agreement on the 1+1+1 joint training program with Bath University.

The establishment of the Artificial Intelligence College of Nankai University is in line with the general trend of national strategic positioning and is of great significance for cultivating professionals in artificial intelligence and promoting discipline development in China. The college has a good foundation in terms of teaching staff, discipline foundation, scientific research team, teaching, and scientific research environment, which provides good internal conditions for the construction of a high-level Artificial Intelligence College. The strong support of Tianjin and NKU provides a good opportunity for the breakthrough development of the college! The college will develop in all aspects, such as discipline construction, personnel training, theoretical innovation, technological breakthrough, and application demonstration, etc., and become a first-class talent training base and scientific and technological innovation base in the field of artificial intelligence in China, playing an important leading and demonstration role in talent training and scientific and technological innovation in this field.