College of Science at Shantou University was established in 1993 based on the four departments of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. In 2001, the Ocean Biotechnology Institute was established with the support of the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, and it was officially merged into the College of Science in 2008. After more than 30 years of development and expansion, the chemistry department and the mathematics department were split and restructured in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and each established its own college, the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and the College of Mathematics and Computer Science. Currently, the College of Science has two departments of physics and biology, and one research institution (the Marine Science Research Institute, including Nan'ao Seaside Experimental Station, a large outdoor experimental station).
The college currently has 109 doctoral students, 514 master's students, and 1,463 undergraduates. There are 152 faculty and staff members, including 100 full-time teachers and 33 full-time professors. Sixty percent of teachers have studied or worked overseas, and 97% of the teachers have a doctorate, with 22 of them having earned their doctorates in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries or regions.
The college has a complete academic platform, with one postdoctoral research station (in biology), two doctoral programs in first-level disciplines (biology and marine science), three master's programs in first-level disciplines (biology, optical engineering, and marine science), and one master's program in a second-level discipline (material physics and chemistry). It also has two professional degree master's programs (in Resources and the Environment, and Biomedicine). Currently, the college offers five undergraduate majors, including biotechnology, marine science (two national top-level undergraduate majors), optoelectronic information science and engineering (a Guangdong provincial top-level undergraduate major), and food safety and inspection, a specialized major, and physics.
The college has two provincial key laboratories in marine biotechnology and marine disaster early warning and defense, as well as two key disciplines in marine biology and biology in Guangdong Province. Currently, marine science is a key discipline for the construction of high-level universities in Guangdong Province. The college's supported disciplines of biology and biochemistry, environmental science and ecology, plant science and zoology, molecular biology and genetics, materials science, pathology and toxicology, and microbiology have all entered the top 1% of the ESI.
The college has advanced and complete experimental facilities and instruments, with more than 50 well-equipped research laboratories and a large outdoor experimental station (Nan'ao Seaside Experimental Station). The total value of the experimental instruments and equipment is over 100 million yuan, and currently includes X-ray single crystal diffractometer, atomic force microscope, scanning electron microscope, Raman spectrometer, and laser confocal microscope, among other large instruments.
The college, based on its various disciplines, actively engages in social service work, including collaborative projects and horizontal research topics, the formulation of local standards, and the training of local industrial technicians. Through the industrialization of research results and technical support and cooperation, the college has brought tens of billions of yuan in huge economic benefits to the local agricultural and chemical industries.
