At the beginning of the New Year, HNUST received a good news from the Science & Technology Department of Hunan Province that the project "Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory on High-performance Precision Machining Technology of Difficult-to-machine Material" was approved. This is the fourth National and Provincial Scientific Research Platform settled in HNUST following "The National and Local Joint Engineering Laboratory on Geographic Information", "Hunan Provincial Engineering Laboratory on Equipment Technology of Marine Mineral Resources Exploratio" and "Hunan Provincial Engineering Laboratory on Early Warning Technology and Equipments of Mine Safety" Presently, HNUST boasts 21 Scientific Research Platforms on Natural Science.