School of Physical Science and Technology

The school of Physical Science and Technology of Soochow University is one of the oldest physics departments established in China at the beginning of the last century. The present School, which locates at the headquarters of Soochow University, has grown successively out of the Department of Physics of DongWu University, Jiangsu Normal School, and Soochow University.

Training objectives

We will integrate the disciplinary research results and the research projects at the international frontier of Science into the teaching and training of postgraduates and undergraduates so as to nurture the high-level innovative talents through both teaching and researching. We are also pushing ahead with international cooperation and Physics lessons entirely taught in English to offer our talents of an international horizon. Through the integration in Physics, Energy and Materials in tutor groups, the talents we are to cultivate will also be versatile experts in every field. Our ultimate goal is to have cultivated the innovative talents facing the whole world who are capable of teaching and researching in areas related to Physics and Technology.

Disciplines and programs

1. Wave-functional and coherent optics

2. Micro Thin Film Sciences and Photovoltaic Devices

3. Condensed Matter Theory and Computational Physics

4. Plasma physics and its application

5. Soft Condensed Matter Physics and Its Interdisciplinary Studies

Status quo and achievements

The school has been expanded to a current size of 100 teaching staff, including 41 professors and 37 associate professors, as well as 383 undergraduate students and 250 graduate students. The academic leaders and members are young and have an international perspective. Since 2008, we have recruited and cultivated more than 20 Distinguished Professors from world-renowned universities. Most of them age between 35 and 40, the prime of life with high potential to tap.  The School now offers three master degree programs in Physics, Material Physics and Chemistry, Course and Discipline Teaching of Physics, along with four doctoral programs in Physics (in all sub-fields), Condensed Matter Physics, Optics, Plasma Physics, Soft Condensed Matter Physics. In addition, there is one postdoctoral station of Physics.

As far as academic research is concerned, there is one Key lab, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Thin Film. Up to now, there are more than 100 projects from the National Natural Science Key Fund and the sub-projects of "973 Project" and "863" Projects, the National Natural Science and Youth Projects being carried out. Over the years, we have done some feature research works on many areas, such as condensed matter physics theory, low dimensional composite materials, low temperature plasma physics and properties, quantum and nonlinear optical characteristics, information optics, and soft matter physics. Annually, more than 100 academic papers are published in foreign SCI, EI periodicals, including Nature Photonics, Nature Commun., Nature Mater., Phys. Rev. Lett. and  Adv. Mater.. We have a current ESI international ranking in physics of 1%, and a national ranking at the 26th to the 28th place. According to NATURE INDEX, we rank 78th worldwide, 8th nationwide in physics, remaining as one of China's twelve universities that are among the top 100 universities worldwide.

In terms of teaching, university physics experimental center is the National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center. Undergraduate physics is the national brand course. General physics is the Excellent Course of Ministry of Education. Electromagnetism is the National Bilingual Teaching Demonstration Course. Three courses have been honored with Excellent Course of Jiangsu Province. Every year, students scored excellent achievements in all kinds of competitions, such as National Challenge Cup and National Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest.  The school has gathered a group of high level research talents, exerting great impact both domestically and internationally. We have been communicating and cooperating closely and continuously with University of Toronto, University of Waterloo and the University of Victoria, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Singapore National University, Australia National University.

The school, depending on research work of such applied projects as Photovoltaic, New Energy, Energy Conservation, has efficiently helped the development of new and important industrial projects of Jiangsu province and Suzhou city like New Energy, Display Technology, Nanotechnology, etc. In 2009 Soochow University cooperated with Suzhou City Government and established Suzhou Institute of Energy Saving Technologies. We have carried out cooperative research projects with many companies. Now the school is responsible for the journal Physics Teacher, which is the bulletin of Physics Education Research Association.

Address: Soochow University, 1 Shizi Street, Suzhou 215006, China; Fax: 86-512-67870271;

Email: leigao@suda.edu.cn, laiyun@suda.edu.cn

Website: http://phys.suda.edu.cn