Later in 1978, the college was awarded the title as national key university and then changed its name to Wuhan Institute of Building Materials.

The former Wuhan Transportation University mainly originated from National Maritime Vocational School in 1946.

The university has engaged more than one hundred famous foreign scholars as Concurrent or Honorary Professors for the university, and often receives experts, scholars and professors from other countries or regions to teach or do research.

The university also sends abroad a number of teachers, professors, and scholars to study and to attend international academic conferences each year.

[citation needed] WUT hosts 27 research centers including two State Key Laboratories, a State Engineering Laboratory and provincial or ministerial level laboratories in the areas of new materials, new energy, transportation and logistics, mechatronics and automobile, information technology as well as resources and environmental technology.

In recent 10 years, WUT has obtained nearly RMB 3 billion of funding from government and industrial sectors for high-tech research and development, and has made a lot of innovative and important technological achievements.

Meanwhile, the University has established its Science Park in Wuhan·China Optical Valley, covering an area of 58.7 hectares, where it has incubated and fostered more than 6 high-tech enterprises based on new materials, fiber optical sensors, high-speed shipping, new energy technology and advanced manufacturing.

The three Boards hold annual meetings regularly to discuss the important issues concerning the mutual development between the university and the three industrial sectors.

WUT also established cooperative relations for students exchange and scientific research with more than 100 foreign universities and research institutions from USA, UK, Japan, France, Australia, Russia and the Netherlands, etc.

In 2006 and 2007, the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs and the Ministry of Education made a joint approval of establishing a state base in WUT for discipline innovation and talent import in the field of advanced materials technology and high-speed shipping technology.

WUT has a building floorage of 1,100,000 square meters and it possesses three libraries with a stock of 2,720,000 books.