Professors relish academic opportunities, benefits of joining college's faculty

Professor Stavros Garoufalidis (right) and assistant professor Ingrid Irmer on campus at SUSTech. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Since its inception a decade ago, Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, has sought to attract international academics, researchers and students to share in its fast-growing development.

This, along with the core mission of research, innovation and entrepreneurship, has been a key element in developing and reforming the approach to university education on campus.

From the outset, SUSTech has invested heavily in scientific resources and facilities. The university is home to 28 departments and centers which have worked on 2,762 projects with some 4.9 billion yuan ($749 million) in funding.

SUSTech has attracted a vast array of talented researchers and academics from such countries as the United States, Russia, India, Australia and more.

Of the over 1,000 faculty members, 90 percent have worked overseas and 60 percent of them have studied or worked at one of the world's top 100 universities.

Stavros Garoufalidis is a Greek-American professor at SUSTech International Center for Mathematics, one of the Nobel laureate labs in Shenzhen. He arrived at the Shenzhen campus almost a year ago to teach and carry out research in the field of quantum topology, covering quantum theory and knot theory.

Garoufalidis said he was attracted to China and particularly SUSTech in Shenzhen because of the importance the university and the city as a whole have placed on science.

"There is a great appreciation for science, which is important to me," he said. "By that I mean appreciation not only academically from the city of Shenzhen, but from the people from my students. They respect scientists and they respect their teachers.

"I was very much attracted by the idea of an international maths center with a primary responsibility to promote research and to bring people from overseas as visitors or faculty here in China," he added. "Just having the resources to do that. Usually you would have to fight a lot for resources both in Europe and in the US."

Ingrid Irmer is an Australian assistant professor in SUSTech's Department of Mathematics. She too is researching topology, and appreciates the university's unique advantages.

"Because we have plenty of resources, we're not fighting over who gets this and who gets that," Irmer said. "So there's a lot of goodwill in the department. We're not competing with each other in that sense."

All top academics that join SUSTech receive an internationally competitive compensation package including research funding, their own laboratory with world-class equipment, and numerous other benefits. Those come in addition to the opportunity to advance their careers and live in one of the most beautiful areas of China.