In 1956, the computer major was founded as one of the two earliest computer majors in China;

In 1985, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Institute of Computer Science and Technology were founded;

In 2000, the School of Software was founded and was approved as the National Pilot School of Software in the following year; 

In 2003, the first-level discipline of computer science and technology ranked 5th in China Discipline Ranking;

In 2008, the National Engineering Laboratory for Information Content Security  Technologies was founded;

In 2012, the discipline of computer science and technology ranked 4th in China Discipline Ranking, and software engineering ranked 7th；

In 2014, the National Engineering Laboratory for Mainframe System was founded;

In 2015, the computer science major went up to the top 100 (51-75) in Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), top 1% (76) of ESI World Rankings, and the 52nd in the U.S. News Rankings of Best Global Universities for computer science. 

In 2017, the Discipline of Computer Science and Technology at Harbin Institute of Technology and the Discipline of Software Engineering both rank among Class A in the latest China Discipline Ranking (CDR). 

In 2017, the Institute of Cyberspace Security was established.

In 2017, the Software Engineering Program passed the China Engineering Education Accreditation.

In 2018, the Institute of Artificial Intelligence was established.

In 2020, the Faculty of Computing was established.

In 2021, our computer science discipline ranks 21st in the world in ARWU, 22nd in US News, and 33th in ESI.