According to the forefront of multiphase flow subject and the important national requirements, regarding the development of the national economy and society and national safety, the present main academic fields of the Laboratory decided by Academic Committee are focused on:
High pressure steam-water two-phase flow and its heat and mass transfer;
Multiphase flow theory and measurement technique in petroleum engineering;
Multiphase flow and energy and mass transfer in chemical processes, natural resource exploiting, and environmental protection;
Multiphase flow in clean combustion and emission control;
Two-phase flow and heat & mass transfer in turbomachinery and thermal power equipments;
Cryogenic two-phase flow and heat & mass transfer;
Numerical simulation of multiphase flow, phase change heat transfer, measurement and prediction of thermo-physical properties of working media;
Multiphase flow and energy & mass transfer in the development of renewable energy and in the hi-technology fields.

There are eight research groups corresponding to the above research direction including 54 staff members in total: 1 academician of CAS, 1 academician of CAE, 1 "CHEUNG KONG ( Yangzi River ) scholars programme" Professor, 1 national excellent teacher, 4 National Experts with Outstanding Contribution, 1 Talented People for "Hundreds and Thousands of Talents Project", 3 talents obtaining the "National Science Foundation for Outstanding young Scientists of China", 3 Talents obtaining the "Trans-Century Training Programme Foundation for the Talents by the State Education Commission", 1 "Ten Outstanding Young People in Shaanxi Province", 1 excellent teacher of Shaanxi Province, 3 "3-5 Talents Training Programme Foundation by the Shaanxi Province Government". There are 4 postdoctors, 144 Ph. D candidates and 213 master students.

More than 10 experimental systems are developed on high pressure gas-liquid two-phase flow and heat transfer; oil-gas-liquid three-phase flow; gas-solid two-phase flow, cryogenic two-phase flow; transient flow and heat transfer; super-critical water flow, heat transfer and thermo-chemical reaction; hydrogen production system gasification of wet biomass in high temperature supercritical water, system of photocatalytic hydrogen production from water splitting using solar energy and accessorial chemical analysis platform, air-water-sand three-phase wind tunnel for sand storm; microgravity two-phase flow and heat transfer; measurement of thermo properties of working media; boiling cooling by jet impact on micro-electronic devices; etc. More than 10 advanced instruments in the field of multiphase flow and heat transfer are purchased including: 3D LDV, High speed digital video system, Malvern, GC-MS, TOC, work stations, as well as advanced CFD software, which supplied ascendant technical conditions for relative research.

From 1990, the Laboratory has obtained over 400 research grants and contracts, among which 35 state level projects including 973, 863, Key Task projects, 77 NSFC projects, 93 provincial and ministerial key projects were conducted. The total amount of contracts is more than Ј¤100 million. The Laboratory has won 51 national and ministerial awards, including 1 National Nature Science award, 3 National Technology Invention awards and 2 National Science and Technology Improvement awards. The 16 national invention and 28 utility model patents were authorized. 19 graduate textbooks, 10 undergraduate textbooks, 7 handbooks and dictionaries were written. Over 2000 papers were published, among which 223 papers were indexed by SCI and 945 papers were indexed by EI. 10 Ph. D finished postdoctoral work, 163 people got Ph. D and 271 got Master's degree.

The Laboratory has important international influence. In order to enhance the academic exchange, the 3rd and 4th international symposium on multiphase flow were held successfully by the Laboratory in 1994 and 1999, respectively. The international symposium on power engineering was held in 2001. The 5th international symposium on multiphase flow, heat transfer and energy conversion will be held in 2005. All the annual academic meeting of multiphase flow major committee of Engineering Thermophysics Society. We have long-term cooperation with Miami University in USA, Patras University in Greece and Hongkong University of Science & Technology. At the same time, the academic exchange relationships with more than 10 universities or institutes in the US, Japan, UK and France have been established. In China, we collaborate closely with Tsinghua University, Southeast University, University of Petroleum, the Engineering Thermophysics Research Institute of the Academy of Science of China and some other organizations, to carry out joint state important research programs. Furthermore much closed cooperation with a lot of corporations has been set up to accelerate the transformation of research results to productive forces.

After more than ten years' development, the Laboratory has obtained great achievements. In March 1997, the Laboratory was appraised as the top one of engineering thermo-physics and energy utilization subject in material and engineering field during the national evaluation organized by the MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology) and NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation of China). In March 2003, the Laboratory was ranked as the first place again, appraised as the top one among the total 29 State Key Laboratories and got the "First-class" State Key Laboratory (A).

Under the leadership of MOST, MOE (Ministry of Education) and Xi'an Jiaotong University, with the direction of academic committee, the Laboratory has the confidence to gain more achievements, construct itself to be the international base for multiphase flow research and make contributions to the improvement of science and technology and development of national economy with all staffs' unremitting efforts.