Young, innovative research university turns 10

Rising star in higher education works with renowned scientists, earning acclaim in decade of reform

Southern University of Science and Technology is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, looking back on a decade of spearheading education reform in China and developing into a model university for innovative research and internationalization.

Like the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, SUSTech has rapidly grown into a nationally renowned innovative university of research with increasing global influence. It ranks among the top 10 universities in the Chinese mainland.

The research-oriented public university was established in China's innovation center of Shenzhen in 2010, with the aspiration of becoming a model and pioneer of education reform.

The university quickly grew to be regarded as a trailblazing institution for interdisciplinary research, nurturing new talents and delivering new knowledge to the world.

The pedigree of SUSTech's scientific roots can be seen from its very beginning. The founding president of SUSTech, Zhu Qingshi, who was president of the University of Science and Technology of China from 1998 to 2008, is a famous physical chemist. His successor, Chen Shiyi, former vice-president of Peking University, is a well-known fluid dynamicist.

Xue Qikun, former vice-president of Tsinghua University and a famous physicist, took the post of SUSTech president in November this year.

He was a recipient of the 2020 Fritz London Prize, and the first scientist from China to receive the highest honor in the field of low temperature physics in the world.

He said he will position SUSTech as a small but excellent, globalized research university with a high-level performance and strong foundation in China.

Despite SUSTech's leafy, green environment, rolling hills and lakes, the university campus also contains modern buildings and facilities with world-class facilities and resources. These equipment and resources are utilized by all of SUSTech's stakeholders from undergraduate and postgraduate students to researchers and professors.

Backed by the support of local and international professionals and experts, SUSTech became a doctorate-awarding institution within just seven years of its initial establishment, and is deemed a high-level STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) school in Guangdong province.

In terms of research achievements and internationalization, SUSTech has also excelled over the past 10 years.

In 2016, the university cooperated with 2005 Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry Robert H. Grubbs to establish the Shenzhen Grubbs Institute.

In the same year, it opened the SUSTech International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO, the only one in the Asia-Pacific.

The following year, SUSTech students took home first place in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, a worldwide synthetic biology competition. In the same year, 14 leaders from world-class universities were invited to take their post of member of the International Advisory Committee of SUSTech.

In 2018, the university, continuing on its rapid development path, opened China's largest cryo-electron microscopy center fitted with world-class equipment. The center was one of the first in the world to examine the coronavirus at a molecular level.

Also in that year, SUSTech signed agreements with international universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to jointly build the Centers for Mechanical Engineering Research and Education. Such is the pace of SUSTech's development, and the center was opened the following year.

The development pace is set to continue well into the future, according to the ambitious university. Furthering the development of its resources in theoretical research, SUSTech has built the International Center for Quantum Research for Shenzhen. The university and King's College of London have agreed to a joint school of medicine.

Over the course of a decade, SUSTech has grown from nothing to a nationally renowned research university with global influence. It has 4,357 undergraduate students, 3,130 postgraduate students and 1,101 members of faculty, of whom 45 are academicians.

SUSTech's schools and colleges have grown to cover science, engineering, business, medicine, innovation and entrepreneurship, humanities and social sciences, design and life sciences.

owenfishwick@chinadaily.com.cn