The school was founded in 1920, and its name was Harbin Sino-Russian Industrial School. After that, it went through the period of Sino-Russian Industrial University and Eastern Special Economic Zone Industrial University. In 1928, the school was officially named Harbin Institute of Technology. In 1951, it was identified as one of the two model universities in China to learn the mode of running foreign higher education. In 1954, it entered the ranks of the first batch of six key universities in China. In 1996, it entered the first batch of key construction universities in the national "211 Project". In 1999, it was identified as one of the first nine universities under the "985 Project". In 2000, it merged with Harbin Jianzhu University to form the new Harbin Institute of Technology.