About the Laboratory

The State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University (abbreviated as SKLHSE) was reorganized in 2023 on the basis of the former State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Science and Technology. The reorganized laboratory serves as a national science and technology innovation base for conducting high-level basic research, applied basic research, and cutting-edge technological research, producing major original achievements, supporting breakthroughs in key core technologies, gathering and cultivating outstanding innovative talents, and carrying out high-level international cooperation.

Centered on the issues of water and sediment regulation and basin protection, the laboratory has established five research directions: hydroscience, river network platform, extreme rainfall and urban resilience, green intelligent construction, and hanging river governance. It conducts organized scientific research oriented by needs, goals, and tasks, driving the development of high-level disciplines and cultivation of high-caliber talents, achieving integrated development of “research-discipline-talent”. The laboratory strives to form, through ten years of development, a theoretical system featuring hydroscience leadership, basin regulation, and hydraulic engineering support, and to achieve strategic, critical, and original outcomes that support the century-long stability of the Yellow River.

The laboratory has established an Academic Committee, with Academician Ni Jinren of the Chinese Academy of Sciences serving as its director. Academician Ni Jinren primarily conducts systematic research on river dynamics and geomorphology, river pollution source control technologies, and river ecological restoration. He established the concept, theory, and methodological system of full material flux in rivers, organized and implemented full-element pilot monitoring for major systems including the Yangtze River, Yellow River, Yarlung Zangbo River, Lancang River, the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, and China’s groundwater, and formed a basin comprehensive governance model based on full material flux. He has led major national scientific and consulting projects including prevention and control of river water and sediment disasters in China, improvement of the golden waterway of the Yangtze River, mitigation of functional flow interruptions in the Yellow River, water pollution control in the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, heavy metal governance in the Xiang River, urban river ecological restoration, sustainable development of major river economic belts, and strategic response to groundwater pollution.

Since its approval for construction, the laboratory has undertaken a series of major national tasks and made significant progress in major theoretical innovation, key technological breakthroughs, serving major national needs, and transforming scientific and technological innovation achievements. In the future, the laboratory will establish a prediction theory for basin water and sediment changes under climate change and sphere interactions led by hydroscience, build a co-created and shared original global river network platform, form a theoretical and engineering system for optimizing urban resilience control under extreme rainfall, innovate green, low-carbon, and intelligent basin governance and protection methods and engineering technologies, and improve the regulation theory and governance technology system for coordinated water and sediment management across the entire basin.