Jointly founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Shanghai Municipal People’s Government in 2013, ShanghaiTech University aspires to be a small-scale, high-level, international university oriented towards research and innovation, for nurturing the next generation of innovative scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs. On February 14, 2022, ShanghaiTech joined the list of China’s World-Class Universities Project as the youngest university in that list. With the backing and support of our two co-founding institutions, ShanghaiTech is committed to tackling the challenges that China and the world are facing in the fields of energy, materials, environment, human health, biological engineering, data science, artificial intelligence and electrical engineering.

As a small-scale university, ShanghaiTech currently has nearly 1,800 undergraduate students, 2,600 master students, and 1,100 doctoral students on campus. Our students benefit from the student-centered educational approach and are encouraged to conduct cross-disciplinary research in an international environment. The curriculum system is structured with international benchmarks. More than 80% of major courses are provided in Chinese and English combined, or in English completely. Undergraduates are encouraged to join a research group from the first year—about 82% of undergraduates do so before their third year while 100% of them do so in their last year. To develop our students’ international perspective, ShanghaiTech provides them with rich study-abroad opportunities at top universities around the world, including Harvard University, MIT, Yale University, UC Berkeley, University of Oxford, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Pennsylvania, University of Padua, and others. Overall, about 79% of ShanghaiTech’s Class of 2022 undergraduates pursue further studies in postgraduate programs, and 22% do so overseas.

ShanghaiTech’s tenure-track system is attracting talented faculty with a wealth of experience from world-leading universities and institutes. Currently there are 328 professors under the tenure-track system, 80% of whom have overseas study or work experiences and around 14% are foreign nationals. There are also 288 adjunct professors, including four Nobel Prize winners, 38 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), 10 members of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), seven members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S), and two fellows of the Royal Society.

Located in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, ShanghaiTech plays an important role in the development of the Zhangjiang Comprehensive National Science Center, in partnership with CAS institutes. The proximity of neighboring facilities offers numerous opportunities for scientific collaborations. The world-class scientific facilities include: National Center for Protein Science (Shanghai), Shanghai HIgh repetitioN rate XFEL and Extreme light facility (SHINE), Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), Shanghai Soft X-ray Free Electron Laser Facility (SXEFL), and others. These facilities welcome not only ShanghaiTech staff and students, but also other researchers from China and the world.

Currently, there are 378 research groups at ShanghaiTech. As of December 2022, ShanghaiTech has published over 11,000 papers, about 3,100 of which are published as ShanghaiTech first affiliation. Furthermore, 113 are published in Cell, Nature and Science. In 2022 alone, there were 6 papers published in Cell, Nature and Science with ShanghaiTech as the first affiliation.

ShanghaiTech has already formed an innovation-friendly campus atmosphere, with a rank of the 1st among universities in Chinese mainland in the “Leading 500 institutions by patent influence metric” released by Nature Index in December 2022. Specifically, there were 15 spinout companies established in 2022, and 37 spinout companies in total. Not only the faculty, but also many students become founders of those spinouts. Further, dedicated incubators inside and outside the campus serve as vital “powerhouses” of innovation practices and bridges for connecting technical, market, policy and capital resources.

After all, the strength of ShanghaiTech stems not only from its world-class facilities, but also from its talent. ShanghaiTech is committed to support them all the way by offering world-class resources and all the guidance they need.