The Acceleration "Run" from a Wheelchair — A Profile of Wang Ji, Researcher at the National University of Defense Technology's College of Computer Science
On the banks of the Xiang River, at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). A morning breeze stirs, and the campus awakens from the dawn as flecks of light and shadow fall through the branches of the parasol trees. Wang Ji rapidly propels his wheelchair, navigating the campus with agility, and enters the "Tianhe" building where he works……
For decades, he has cultivated deep expertise in the field of high-assurance software (高可信软件), yielding abundant results — appointed professor at 33, awarded the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars at 38, and honored with a First-Class Military Science and Technology Progress Award, a Second-Class National Science and Technology Progress Award, and numerous provincial and ministerial-level prizes……
Today, having undergone high-level bilateral amputation more than ten years ago and endured over 700 dialysis sessions, Wang Ji continues to "charge forward" on the new journey of building a strong nation and a strong military——
Guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military, Wang Ji takes his wheelchair as his battle position and, with a sense of urgency that brooks no delay, remains ever at the cutting edge of rapidly evolving national defense scientific research. Wang Ji's life — from "fast-forward" to "pause," from "restart" to "acceleration" — has, through the will to scale new heights and the conviction never to concede defeat, "run out" from a wheelchair the acceleration that belongs to this era.
**Original Aspiration**
Meeting Wang Ji for the first time, his clear gaze and brilliant smile are as warm as spring water. Because the amputation sites are so high, his legs have been entirely replaced by trouser legs folded neatly on the wheelchair.
*Wang Ji moving through the campus (photographed June 7, 2023). Issued by Xinhua.*
Fate may have taken his health, but it has never changed his original aspiration.
"To take up arms and defend the state (执干戈以卫社稷)" — this is the meaning his parents embedded in his name. Wang Ji was born in Shanghai in November 1969 and the following year moved with his parents to Changde, Hunan, to support the Third Front Construction (三线建设). "Diligent young scholar" was the first impression people had of him — from elementary school onward, Wang Ji's outstanding mathematical talent allowed him to skip grades repeatedly. In 1983, not yet 14 years old, Wang Ji was admitted to NUDT's Department of Computer Science with outstanding results.
That same December, China's first hundred-million-operations-per-second supercomputer, "Galaxy-I" (银河-Ⅰ), was successfully developed at NUDT, making China the third country in the world capable of independently designing and manufacturing supercomputers.
At the time, the whole nation was jubilant, and "Galaxy-I" came to be called the "machine that proved our worth" (争气机).
The young Wang Ji witnessed the first clarion call for self-reliance and self-strengthening in China's computing enterprise, and his connection with "Galaxy" began there — later, his master's and doctoral supervisor would be Academician Chen Huowang, the chief software systems director of "Galaxy-I."
At a standing-room-only academic lecture, Chen Huowang passionately articulated the nation's urgent need for information technology and encouraged young people to dare to gnaw on the "hard bones" (硬骨头) and press boldly into high technology.
In the audience, Wang Ji's heart surged.
A young boy's vague wish "to study computers" gradually elevated into a firm conviction about the words "national defense": "Use computers to support national defense."
During the interview, we asked him: "Of everything you learned following Academician Chen, what influenced your life the most?"
"Confidence!" Wang Ji answered without hesitation: "'Galaxy-I's' system software was one of our country's earliest large-scale software engineering projects. In terms of software autonomy and controllability (软件自主可控), we have confidence in our ability to make our own contribution."
*Wang Ji answering media questions at a university-organized public interview (photographed June 7, 2026). Issued by Xinhua (photographed by Han Qiyang).*
From the elder generation of "Galaxy people" such as Ci Yungui and Chen Huowang, he decoded the "cipher" of Chinese scientists' confidence, self-reliance, and self-strengthening: the fighting spirit of "giving everything, even one's life, to get it done" in the face of national and military needs.
After completing his doctorate and remaining at the university, Wang Ji resolved to forge a new path in software autonomy and controllability.
He firmly believed: what foreigners can do, Chinese people can do too.
In his application to join the Party, Wang Ji wrote: "I am willing to devote all my energy to the Party's cause and to struggle for it my entire life."
This road of independent innovation, bearing the weight of technological self-strengthening, he has walked for more than 30 years.
**Pioneering**
In China's computer software field, there are few who do not know Wang Ji.
Wang Huaimin, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor at NUDT, has assessed him this way: "Wang Ji is the principal pioneer of China's high-assurance software field."
From chasing the dream of spaceflight to advancing into the deep blue, from fighter aircraft soaring through the sky to long-range missiles standing ready, from supercomputers topping the rankings to the digital sinews of the battlefield — across more than 30 years of research related to high-assurance software technology, behind countless moments that have left a vivid impression on the Chinese people, the figures of Wang Ji and his team are present.
Yet more than 30 years ago, this field was virtually a "no-man's land" (无人区) in China.
Toward the end of the last century, as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) transitioned from mechanization to informatization, Wang Ji acutely recognized that software security directly bears on military and even national defense security.
At the same time, an overseas incident caught Wang Ji's attention: a certain launch vehicle exploded in a fireball dozens of seconds after liftoff.
The root cause was an error in a single line of code.
Wang Ji, wearing the uniform, realized that "software reliability" (软件可靠性) was bound to become the vital pressure point of national defense security. He pressed himself repeatedly: when software becomes the "brain" of a great nation's most powerful instruments, how can one ensure it will absolutely never fail at the most critical moment?
The young Wang Ji, thinking ahead about national strategic needs, conceived an entirely new research direction — high-assurance software technology: using mathematical methods to verify the correctness of code from the ground up in logic.
"High-assurance software is the 'doctor of software,'" explained Dong Wei, a professor at NUDT and member of Wang Ji's team. By performing a "full-body CT scan" of the software systems of a great nation's most powerful instruments and making precise diagnoses, one can identify deep-seated hidden vulnerabilities and hazards.
In 1999, the then-fledgling Wang Ji was invited to participate in a reliability assessment task for aerospace-related software. He and his team members ran repeated deductions and multi-dimensional tests, narrowing dozens of models down to five or six, then adjusted parameters one by one and iterated toward optimization…… After countless rounds of trial and error, the "best-fit" model was successfully identified.
In 2003, Wang Ji co-authored the paper "High-Assurance Software Engineering Technology" (《高可信软件工程技术》) with his supervisor Academician Chen Huowang and others. This was China's earliest systematic paper in the field and continues to be cited at high frequency by the academic community to this day.
"Only by doing frontier research is it easier to discover the frontier." Wang Ji often used this saying to encourage himself, and to inspire his colleagues and students.
*Wang Ji (right) exchanging views on a project with a colleague (photographed May 17, 2026). Issued by Xinhua (photographed by Fan Junwei).*
He astutely predicted that as the times developed, the demands of national security and military informatization construction for high-assurance software would grow day by day, making it urgent to cultivate and build a first-rate team.
Accordingly, Wang Ji opened China's first graduate-level course in "high-assurance software technology," training professional talent for the nation in this field.
High-assurance software is foundational and critical research — the threshold is high, the difficulty great, and the cycle long. Many people dropped out midway, and Wang Ji was repeatedly urged to give up.
Wang Ji's answer was simple: "Someone has to sit on this 'cold bench' (冷板凳)."
Over the decades, Wang Ji and his team have been remarkably stable on this "cold bench" — core members such as Mao Xiaoguang and Chen Liqian: which of them is not a name that resonates throughout the field? What force has kept them so united in sitting on this "cold bench" alongside Wang Ji?
The answer is simple. As Wang Ji himself has said: "High-assurance software technology targets the critical technological foundation of national defense equipment. Results may be hard to come by quickly in the short term, but basic research aims at the future." Under his leadership, shared faith and mission have forged this team into a burning "torch" — keeping their eyes on the needs of the nation and the military, gnawing on the hardest "bones," with the sole aim of making high-assurance software ever more reliable.
In 2012, Wang Ji's team received an urgent request from the aerospace industry sector regarding trusted software, the main problem being defects such as intermittent system interruptions. After investigation and research, the software tools already available domestically at the time were found incapable of detecting and identifying the problem.
Do it, or not? "Scientific research is like climbing a mountain — keep going and a way will always be found." Wang Ji led the team to start from scratch and successfully solved the problem. The tool they developed later played an outstanding role in ensuring aerospace software quality.
Over the years, Wang Ji has led and participated in more than 30 important research projects, with some project results at the international forefront. He has led his team, always driven by major national equipment construction projects, and made important contributions to the reliability and security of critical software in major national and military weapons programs.
Time and again, when people's eyes are fixed on the "great national instruments" (国之重器) making their stunning appearances, Wang Ji and his team have long since melted back into the vast crowd, quietly forging the "high-assurance shield" (高可信之盾) of software for national security and the high-quality development of the military.
**"Restart"**
In a photograph, a young Wang Ji, physically whole, stands beside his daughter who is not yet two years old, his smile as radiant as the flowers in the flower field behind him.
This was a rare moment of warmth between Wang Ji — who spent long years busy at the scientific research front line — and his daughter. And such scenes were frozen forever in the spring of 2012.
A few months later, the unexpected struck.
In the early hours of January 23, 2013, Wang Ji suffered a sudden aortic dissection. This is an extremely dangerous cardiovascular emergency, with a mortality rate as high as 20%……
How dangerous? To save his life, Wang Ji underwent emergency "ascending aorta replacement + aortic arch replacement + stent elephant trunk implantation," a surgery lasting 13 hours; then, due to lower-limb arterial embolism causing muscle necrosis, he was compelled to undergo "high bilateral lower-limb amputation."
Wang Ji's condition gripped everyone's heart, and wave after wave of people rushed to the hospital to visit. The university's senior leadership went to the hospital in person to coordinate without pause: "He is a treasure of our university and the military. Please spare no cost to rescue him and preserve his life……"
Medical records at Xiangya Hospital show that from January 23, 2013 to July 1, 2013, Wang Ji underwent more than ten surgeries in total, including seven deep debridement surgeries alone, and spent a total of 147 days in the intensive care unit.
Semi-conscious after surgery, Wang Ji lay flat, unable to see how much of his legs remained. His wife, Huang Chun, suppressing her grief, gestured with her two palms held almost together: "This much is left."
Upon learning this, Wang Ji let out a long, heavy sigh.
Everyone assumed that Wang Ji, gravely ill, would perhaps press the "pause button."
"Wang Ji, when will you recover? We're all waiting for you to come back and keep working!" Leaders and colleagues encouraged him one after another.
But no one could have imagined that Wang Ji, still in the intensive care unit, had already begun a new "starting run"——
With both legs amputated from the hip, he could not adapt for a time; both hands were also frequently numb from prolonged nerve compression. Again and again, with great difficulty, he managed to sit up, only to collapse again in an instant……
Even though each attempt left him drenched in sweat from the pain, he still endured the agony and struggled to get up, poring over materials, typing on a keyboard, working on research projects……
*Wang Ji attempting to use prosthetics during rehabilitation (archival photograph). Issued by Xinhua.*
The medical staff at Xiangya Hospital had seen many patients, but a patient who persisted in studying and working in the intensive care unit — that was a first.
Even at the darkest nadir of his life, what was never extinguished was the ember of faith deep in Wang Ji's heart.
On November 5, 2013, President Xi Jinping inspected NUDT. During the inspection, President Xi emphasized the need to work hard to build NUDT into a high ground for cultivating high-quality new-type military personnel and a high ground for autonomous innovation in national defense science and technology, providing strong talent and scientific and technological support for realizing the Chinese Dream and the Dream of a Strong Military.
Wang Ji read the news repeatedly on his hospital bed — the Commander-in-Chief's earnest instructions, the era's call of the Chinese Dream and the Dream of a Strong Military, the weighty mission of autonomous innovation in national defense science and technology…… In his heart, these converged into a single thought: "restart" himself.
"I am very fortunate — my brain and my hands are intact, and the basic conditions for work have not been lost. I think everything can be managed." Wang Ji used the language of computers to make light of himself: my body has experienced a "crash," but as long as I "restart," everything proceeds as normal.
On the journey of building a strong nation and a strong military in the new era, Wang Ji began the second charge of his life!
**Charging Forward**
After more than a year of rehabilitation training, one day after the Spring Festival of 2015, colleagues at NUDT were delighted to discover: Wang Ji — always wearing a smile — had returned, propelling his wheelchair!
During Wang Ji's rehabilitation, the university renovated barrier-free passageways and restrooms for him and made barrier-free modifications to every place he needed to pass through in his daily work.
Everyone said he was "the return of the king (王者归来)" — the bugle call of military strengthening in the new era had already sounded, and much work was waiting for him to take the lead……
In 2015, Wang Ji resolutely took the lead in applying for a national defense 973 Program project and served as its chief technical expert. This was the only purely software project that year targeting urgent national and military needs.
During the days of applying for project approval, Wang Ji tossed and turned for several nights in a row, unable to sleep.
A scene kept surfacing in his mind: at an academic conference, foreign researchers who had been volubly introducing their product technology, upon hearing that the Chinese visitors were from NUDT, began to deflect and then simply fell silent.
Behind the silence was a wordless contest.
Wang Ji knew that in the traditional sense of warfare, it would be very difficult for him to participate any longer. But on the battlefield of scientific and technological self-reliance and self-strengthening, he remained the iron soldier who forges shields with code and charges without cease.
On July 19, 2017, another unforgettable day. In step with the era's pulse of reform and military strengthening, President Xi Jinping presented the military flag and delivered instructions to the newly reorganized and established NUDT, marking a new historical position for this military academy that had traversed arduous years — NUDT is a high ground for cultivating high-quality new-type military personnel and for autonomous innovation in national defense science and technology.
"High ground" — the Commander-in-Chief's earnest expectation of NUDT.
"Since it is a high ground, on the journey of strengthening the military through science and technology and through talent, we should rightly be at the very forefront." Mission and martial spirit surged in his heart, converging into all the strength driving Wang Ji's "restart" on this "high ground."
Only, this "restart" had no shortcut key——
To condition his body to the intensity of work, Wang Ji "sweated profusely" in rehabilitation training; to improve mobility efficiency, he abandoned prosthetics that proved ineffective and chose to spend his life with a wheelchair; to maintain his physical condition, he persisted in using a manual wheelchair as his "fitness equipment"……
*Wang Ji working during rehabilitation treatment at the hospital (archival photograph). Issued by Xinhua.*
As chief technical expert, the project's advancement required countless planning reviews, milestone checks, and acceptance evaluations that demanded he travel to other locations. University and college leadership expressed concern, but out of a strong sense of responsibility, Wang Ji always handled these personally.
Over time, Wang Ji also worked out a set of his own "secret travel methods."
— Traveling alone, he invented his own "pommel horse vault" (鞍马跳) for getting in and out of vehicles: when getting in, he uses the strength of his arms and core to hoist his entire body and land steadily in the front passenger seat; getting out is the reverse — the whole sequence fast and precise;
— For trips that can be completed in a single day, he never stays overnight. He frequently catches the earliest flight, finishes his business, and then catches the last flight back to Changsha that same day, ensuring he appears in the office as normal the next day;
— His luggage is also simple: a backpack worn on his chest, containing materials, a laptop, and a change of clothes……
On one occasion, prolonged sitting during a business trip meeting caused the skin flap on Wang Ji's right amputation site to break down and ulcerate. He smiled and agreed to the doctor's instructions.
Before long, however, he was traveling again……
So as not to delay progress, during the years the national defense 973 project was advancing, Wang Ji made more than 70 business trips in total — even the staff at Changsha Huanghua Airport came to know this "wheelchair professor."
After six years of exhausting effort, Wang Ji and his team developed a "toolbox" targeting software reliability problems across different domains and different types. In 2021, the project successfully passed acceptance review, and the comprehensive evaluation report stated: "The overall technical level is at the international forefront and domestic leading position, with some comparable indicators at the international leading level." In January 2025, based on results incubated from the project, Wang Ji was awarded a First-Class Military Science and Technology Progress Award, and the relevant technologies were successfully applied to multiple critical national defense equipment programs.
At the same time, under the pressure of the project, Wang Ji also pushed for the establishment of the China Computer Federation's Formal Methods Technical Committee (中国计算机学会形式化方法专委会).
As the "mathematical foundation" of high-assurance software technology, research in formal methods (形式化方法) is critically important. "Establishing the technical committee was precisely to rally the small but extremely precious scientific research forces across the country," Wang Ji said.
Today, this precious scientific research force has grown from the initial few dozen people in 2015 to more than a thousand.
"The pathfinder in the deep mountains and old forests is always the first to see the sunrise." Some have used these words to describe Wang Ji.
In Wang Ji, technological self-reliance and self-strengthening has never been a slogan — it is a charge with every ounce of strength.
**Acceleration**
Keeping pace with the new era's drive to strengthen the military through science and technology, Wang Ji's battle position has undergone a profound "displacement" — the orbital paths of the BeiDou constellation, the "footprints" on the lunar surface, the wakes of vessels heading into the deep blue, and the electromagnetic waves cutting through the air in joint operations all invisibly pull at the direction of Wang Ji's and his team's charge.
Wang Ji has "sensed" the urgency of the era bearing down: "People in software all say 'software defines warfare' (软件定义战争). Intelligentized warfare (智能化作战) is a competition over whose software is faster and better."
Yet fate was also competing for his time.
In 2021, Wang Ji collapsed on the lecture platform and was diagnosed with renal failure, with no conditions suitable for a kidney transplant. As his condition progressed, he required three dialysis sessions per week to maintain his physical state.
*Wang Ji receiving dialysis at the hospital (photographed June 6, 2026). Issued by Xinhua (photographed by Han Qiyang).*
Those who have faced death understand the weight of time more deeply.
Time waits for no one——
To save time, he has long lived in the hospital ward, moving between "ward and office" on a two-point line;
To save the time of going back and forth to the cafeteria, he often eats in the office, occasionally using the noon hour to go home and see his family;
Even while undergoing dialysis in the hospital bed, he uses his phone to review frontier materials in relevant domestic and international fields;
On business trips, when the armrest of his wheelchair broke, he had no time to repair it — he wrapped it with tape and kept going……
Time waits for no one——
"Scientific research addresses the work of today; teaching and education cultivates the people of the future — neither can be set aside." Wang Ji said.
Education is a fundamental undertaking of the nation and the Party. For this fundamental undertaking, Wang Ji regards his students' growth as his greatest success, not only imparting knowledge of high-assurance software but also planting the seeds of a high-assurance life.
*Wang Ji (center) discussing with students in the library (photographed May 20, 2026). Issued by Xinhua (photographed by Fan Junwei).*
He has a habit when guiding students — he rarely uses PowerPoint, instead having students work through derivations on a whiteboard with markers; the moment he detects a logical gap, he calls an immediate halt.
Student Du Yi recalls that while covering a chapter on formal methods, he got stuck halfway through writing on the whiteboard. Wang Ji took the marker and began deriving from foundational theorems — row after row of neat formulas and clear logical chains appeared on the whiteboard.
"Those ten-odd minutes of being stuck were the most solidly I learned anything that semester," Du Yi said.
This "whiteboard teaching method" (白板教学法) is something Wang Ji inherited from his supervisor Academician Chen Huowang. The method has also been inherited by Wang Ji's colleagues and students. Batch after batch of people who were forged in front of the whiteboard have now become the backbone of their respective fields.
Time waits for no one——
Students all say that Teacher Wang Ji's time is a variable — he economizes it to the extreme for himself, yet is boundlessly generous with it for his students.
Student Liu Wanwei encountered setbacks while improving a classical algorithm and was on the verge of giving up. Wang Ji told him: "This is a root technology (根技术) in the nation's software field — no amount of time spent on it is too much." Teacher and student devoted themselves to it for four years, and ultimately, through tight analysis, reduced the upper bound of the algorithm's complexity by an exponential factor. Liu Wanwei later said, "Without that word from Teacher Wang, I definitely could not have persisted."
Wang Ji always smiles and says he is a "worn-out vehicle that must go slowly." But once he gets to work, the speed at which he propels his wheelchair requires an ordinary person to jog to keep up.
"Urgency" and "no urgency" both stem from Wang Ji's understanding of mission — "President Xi requires scientific and technological workers to write their papers on the land of the motherland. As a military research worker, that means writing papers in the practice of building a strong nation and a strong military."
For the sake of a strong military, he can race against time, rushing about with a sense that time will not wait; for the sake of a strong military, he can spend decades researching high-assurance software technology; for the sake of a strong military, he can spend four years guiding a student to improve an algorithm…… He says: "Doing scientific research requires both reaching for the sky and standing on the ground (顶天立地). Reaching for the sky means focusing on the major strategic needs of the nation and the military; standing on the ground means serving new-quality productive forces (新质生产力) and new-quality combat capabilities (新质战斗力) in every respect."
**Glory**
Inside a venue at NUDT's College of Computer Science, before a painting titled "Little Tail" (小尾巴), Wang Ji in his wheelchair laughs heartily. In the painting, his wife Huang Chun is absorbed in her work, while their daughter, her hair in a ponytail, lies on the floor of a computer room helping the aunties and uncles record data and affix labels……
Behind this painting is a story that commands both admiration and tears——
In the first half of 2021, Wang Ji needed to travel elsewhere for treatment due to renal failure. At the same time, Wang Ji's wife, Huang Chun — chief designer of the "Tianhe" supercomputer compiler team — was also at a critical stage of a key project push, requiring concentrated work in Tianjin.
Wang Ji got in first and said to Huang Chun: "Go without worry — I'll be fine."
Only then did Huang Chun make up her mind, taking their young daughter and heading to Tianjin. After two months of intensive effort, the "Tianhe" E-class computer verification system that Huang Chun's team participated in developing claimed two world firsts.
"For scientific researchers, mutual fulfillment in one's career is the best form of companionship." Wang Ji said.
There is a kind of "lightness and ease" that conceals the deepest affection. Wang Ji and Huang Chun, through their loyalty to mission and their pursuit of the national defense science and technology enterprise, entrust to each other their trust and encouragement.
The year Wang Ji fell ill, his daughter was just over two years old. When she was in elementary school, she once drew a "planning diagram" for her father titled "Steps" (台阶): steps extending upward one by one…… In the lower right corner of the drawing, his daughter wrote: "The steps symbolize Father's self-respect and ideals."
A person stands upright not only on two legs, but also on spirit; a soldier stands upright not only in an erect posture, but in an ever-upward charge — the "Galaxy spirit" (银河精神) of "cherishing the motherland, uniting in cooperation, aspiring to the summit, and striving with courage" (胸怀祖国、团结协作、志在高峰、奋勇拼搏) was forged by Academician Chen Huowang and the elder generation of "Galaxy people" in the crucible of arduous breakthroughs.
"Galaxy connects to Zhongnanhai (银河连着中南海)" — these seven characters are engraved on a bronze plaque inside the "Tianhe" building. These seven characters, each carrying the weight of a thousand jun, silently bear witness to the fact that all faculty and students of NUDT have always resonated in the same frequency with the destiny of the Party, the nation, and the military.
What Wang Ji received from his predecessors was not only a body of knowledge, but a mission. He often tells his students: NUDT students must be the vanguard who break through "chokepoint" technologies (卡脖子技术), not profit-seekers chasing hot topics.
New journey, new mission. What Wang Ji and all "NUDT people" find even more impossible to forget is that on September 1, 2023, President Xi Jinping sent a letter of congratulations on the 70th anniversary of NUDT's founding, fully affirming that the university had cultivated a large number of outstanding talents, overcome a large number of cutting-edge technologies, and achieved a large number of major weapons and equipment research and development results, and expressing the hope that the university would work hard to play an important role in implementing the strategy of strengthening the military through science and technology and the strategy of strengthening the military through talent.
Seventy years, writing the brilliant chapter of cultivating people for the Party and forging shields for the nation; new journey, embarking on an expedition full of glory and dreams.
Focused on the "14th Five-Year Plan" period as the "critical breakthrough period for building a science and technology powerhouse" (科技强国建设的关键攻坚期), Wang Ji's team has launched a new charge against the trustworthiness problems of artificial intelligence.
"Military intelligence belongs to a frontier direction — the corresponding high-assurance software technology has no ready-made experience and cannot be obtained through importation; it can only rely on autonomous innovation." Looking to the future, Wang Ji is full of confidence: "We will go all out in research and struggle, and will absolutely never (绝不) fail to live up to the Commander-in-Chief's instructions."
From the wheelchair, loyalty is written.
He is Wang Ji——
From inheritor of the Galaxy spirit to climber of the scientific research high ground, from the charging warrior on the road to a strong military to the vigorous "runner" striding toward the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation……
He has fused his personal struggle into the great current of the era, and with the acceleration "run" from a wheelchair, has composed a battle hymn of military strengthening for the new era!