NUIST main entrance gateNanjing Meteorological Institute (南京气象学院旧门)
The Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST; 南京信息工程大学) is a provincial public university in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
History and Status Quo
Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology (NUIST), founded in 1960 and renamed from Nanjing Institute of Meteorology in 2004, was designated as one of the national key institutions of higher education in 1978. NUIST is co-constructed by the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Government, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) and the Ministry of Education. Since 2017, NUIST has been on the list of China’s “Double First-class” construction universities and disciplines as well as Jiangsu high level universities. During the year 2021-2023, it ranked around 50th among Chinese mainland universities and around 500th, 400th and 900th in U.S. News, ARWU, and QS University Rankings respectively.
Advantage Disciplines
NUIST has a complete higher education system with undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral programmes as well as post-doctoral research centres. The discipline of Atmospheric Science has been selected as a national "world-class discipline" and achieved excellent results in the evaluations conducted by China’s Ministry of Education. Nine disciplines, namely, Geoscience, Engineering, Computer Science, Environmental Science and Ecology, Chemistry, Agricultural Science, Material Science, General Social Science and Mathematics have entered the ESI top 1% rankings with Geoscience and Computer Science in the ESI top 1% rankings.
Students and Faculty
Currently, NUIST has about 38,140 full-time students, including 28,800 undergraduate students, 7,860 postgraduate students,1,480 international students and 450 exchange students. The university has over 2,300 full-time faculty members and more than 800 part-time teachers. Among them there are 2 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 16 overseas academicians, 2 IAA academicians, 117 national level talents, and more than 500 provincial and ministerial level talents. 85% of the full-time teachers have doctorates and 67% of them have experiences of studying or working abroad for no less than one year.
International Cooperation
NUIST has established cooperative relationship with 150 overseas universities and institutions from over 30 countries and regions including Yale University, Harvard University, the University of Reading, the University of Manchester, South East Technological University, Russian State Hydometeorological University, Carlton University, Delft University of Technology, Macquarie University and Monash University. NUIST was admitted to such programmes as Chinese Government Scholarship, the Confucius Institute Scholarship and Jiangsu Government Scholarship. To date, the WMO Regional Training Centre Nanjing at NUIST has trained over 6,000 senior meteorological and hydrological professionals for more than 160 countries and regions and become the world’s largest training centre of top quality.
NUIST has established joint research institutes in various disciplines with partner universities. Typical examples include the NUIST - Harvard Joint Laboratory for Air Quality and Climate (JLAQC) and Yale - NUIST Atmospheric Environment Research Centre. JLAQC has gained a large number of creative scientific achievements. In recent 3 years, 12 papers from the JLAQC research fellows were published in top international academic journals such as Nature, Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, Nature Communications, PNAS, Advanced Materials. The cooperation with Yale University was reported as a model of Sino-US scientific research cooperation in the article titled Science superpowers find common ground by Nature . Besides , there are many other cooperation modes like applying for joint scientific research programmes, jointly cultivating students, and co-hosting international conferences, workshops or seminars.
Another successful cooperative mode is transnational education institutions and programmes, such as NUIST Reading Academy co-constructed with the University of Reading in the UK and NUIST Waterford Institute co-constructed with the South East Technological University in Ireland. Moreover, there are various short-term students’ or teachers’ exchange programmes between NUIST and our global partners.
International Association of Meteorological Education and Sciences (IAMES)
Environmental pollution and meteorological disasters have become common challenges faced by mankind. The International Association of Meteorological Education and Sciences (IAMES) was established in December 2020, which was initiated by NUIST and supported by more than 30 colleges, universities and scientific research institutions from over 20 countries.
IAMES is a non-governmental, non-profit, academic and scientific organization, dedicated to international promotion and coordination of scientific studies and education on meteorology (atmospheric science, hydrology, environmental science and other meteorology related disciplines). IAMES encourages the application of this knowledge to social needs, such as weather forecast, climate change, mitigation of natural hazards and environmental preservation.
IAMES is established to stimulate meteorological education and research, promote scientific and technological innovation, share high-quality platform resources, provide government policy consultation, and enhance the coordination ability to respond to major scientific issues.
There are 34 members in IMAES, such as NUIST, Nanjing University, Sun Yat-sen University, Princeton University, the University of Reading, Russian State Hydrometeorological University, Seoul National University and Cairo University.
The establishment of IAMES got strong support from Chinese government (e.g. Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Commerce, China Meteorological Administration) and international organizations such as World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Petteri Taalas, then Secretary-General of WMO, also offered his support to the establishment of IAMES.
College of International Students (CIS)
NUIST started to enroll international students in 1990 and the international degree programmes were approved in 1996. The College of International Students undertakes admission, teaching and administration of international students studying in a variety of programmes including Chinese language and other bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programmes taught in Chinese and English.
The number of international students reached 1700+ from over 120 countries, 82% of whom are degree students, and 29% of whom are postgraduates.
WMO Regional Training Center Nanjing (WMO RTC Nanjing)
The World Meteorological Organization Regional Training Centre Nanjing (WMO RTC Nanjing) is located at NUIST. Approved by the Executive Council of WMO, the RTC Nanjing was formally established in 1993. It has held about 200 international and dozens of bilateral training courses since 1990. Over 6,000 meteorologists and hydrologists from 160 countries (regions) have been trained at the Center. Many of the trainees have been the backbones of their National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs).
