Overview

Bathed in the auspicious air of Zhongshan mountain to the east and faced with Yangtze river to the north, the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Southeast University is located on the beautiful shores of Kowloon Lake in Jiangning district, Nanjing city. Early in 1928, Southeast University (formerly known as National Central University) has established such undergraduate majors as engineering materials, casting and forging materials. To facilitate the development of materials science, the university established the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in December 1984 on the basis of subjects as casting, metal materials and heat treatment. Then gradually formed the major of Civil Engineering Materials in Civil Engineering Department, the major of Advanced Materials Processing in Mechanical Engineering Department and other related majors. The School was renamed as the School of Materials Science and Engineering in 2006.

At present, the School not only has four departments including Metal Materials, Civil Engineering Materials, Material Processing Engineering and Electronic Information Materials, but also the doctoral station and postdoctoral programs of the first-class discipline of Materials Science and Engineering, containing three doctoral programs of second-level disciplines-Material Physics and Chemistry, Material Processing Engineering and Materials Science. The School also has its own doctoral station of the second-level discipline Civil Engineering Materials. The undergraduate major of Materials Science and Engineering is a provincial key major and a national characteristic major as well, New Materials and Applications a preponderant key discipline, and Materials Science a provincial key subject.

The School possesses an outstanding team led by two academicians from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, consisting of 34 doctoral supervisors such as the experts from the distinguished professors of Changjiang Scholars, and the prize-winners of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. There are 66 full-time teachers, of whom 92% have doctorates, and the majority have oversea education background.

With the aim of cultivating the urgently-needed “excellent, international and innovative” talents, the School enrolls about 120 undergraduates, over 120 postgraduates and doctoral students every year, many of whom have won numerous awards in national subject competitions. More than half of the annual undergraduate graduates choose to continue their studies at domestic or oversea universities and research institutions. The School offers 18 alumni scholarships including Subotnik fund, Kwang-Hua Scholarship, Sun Wei Scholarship, Miao Changwen Scholarship as well as enterprise scholarships or grants. To train more talents, it has over 70% students covered by different grants or awards.

The School boasts such scientific research and teaching experimental platforms as Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Civil Engineering Materials, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Metal Materials High-tech Research, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Civil Engineering Materials, as well as those with national metrology certification, like the Southeast University Analysis and Testing Center, Jiangsu Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center and Innovation Platform for Materials Science Graduates. 21 Jiangsu Enterprise Graduate Workstations and nearly 20 enterprise internship bases have been established for the training of outstanding personnel in materials industry .

In recent years, the School has been a leader in hundreds of programs including the National Basic Research 973 Project, National 863 High-tech Project, National Natural Science Foundation Projects, COSTIND Science High-tech Projects, provincial and ministerial fund projects, provincial major scientific and technological achievements transformation projects, international cooperation projects and local enterprises technical services projects; It has participated in numbers of basic and applied research of major national projects, including the Shenzhou Spacecraft and the Three Gorges Dam; It has obtained a second prize of National Technology Inventions and 4 second prizes of National Scientific and Technological Progress, and more than 20 provincial S&T Progress Award.

As an active promoter in international exchanges and cooperation, the School has established long-term and stable cooperative relations with many internationally renowned universities in personnel training, scientific research, academic activities and so forth.