After over 60 years of development, South China University of Technology (SCUT) has become a multi-disciplinary comprehensive research-oriented university. It integrates sciences and engineering, and distinguishes itself among domestic universities by its engineering disciplines. SCUT was selected into top 500 of "Academic Ranking of World Universities" by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2012. In the following year, it found its way onto the list of Chinese top-ranking universities by "Chinese University Ranking", and was reselected into top 500 of "Academic Ranking of World Universities". In 2014, it leaped forward into the range of 301-400, and assessed as top 50 in the field of engineering disciplines worldwide in which 6 mainland universities were included. Other disciplines in SCUT, such as chemistry, materials science, engineering science, agricultural science, physics, biology and biochemistry, have entered top 1% in ESI globally. In recent years, SCUT has distinctive advantages in the health-related areas including new medical materials, biomedical devices, tissue and delivery engineering, medical imaging and information, nutrition and health, biopharmaceutics. With university-industry cooperation and cross-disciplinary integration, medicine has become the disciplinary bottleneck of SCUT to promote collaborative innovation and address major national and local needs. School of Medicine of SCUT was inaugurated with the mutual promotion of SCUT and Guangdong General Hospital (Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences) on September 12, 2014.

The School of Medicine is located in Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center with elegant architectural complex and picturesque environment. Shenzhen BAONENG Investment Group Co., Ltd. has invested 100 million to support the construction of new school building. The building has gross floor area of 30000 m2. The concept of advanced modern architectural design is applied. The building plan adheres to user-friendly principle, and considers functional and psychological demands. The experimental teaching areas, scientific research laboratories and administrative offices are relatively separated. An upper sloping "air sharing" courtyard is well designed with built-in green plants as an integral part of the scene, in hope to provide "human-oriented, ecological, intelligent" environments for our staff and students.

Aiming to be “first-class at home, well-known abroad, high level medical personnel training base and medical science innovation center”, the school has led to comprehensive educational reforms, explored the proactive and flexible management systems, and gathered a team of proficient and competent talents with reasonable structure. The Dean of the school has been appointed to Professor Zhuang Jian, Chairman designate of Chinese Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, President of Guangdong General Hospital and Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences. At present, a total of 105 teachers have been recruited, including one recipient of “National Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Talents Project”, one recipient of “young and middle-aged experts with outstanding contribution in the national level”, one recipient of “young and middle-aged experts with outstanding contribution to the National Health and Family Planning Commission”, the only one Chinese recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Award from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), one recipient of “One Thousand Plan of Talents", one recipient of “Yangtze River Scholar" of the Ministry of Education, one recipient of “the National Scientific Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars”, one recipient of “One Thousand Plan of Young Talents”. The school has recruited 80 professors including attending and research fellows, 87 Master supervisors and 7 PhD supervisors. The entire newly recruited staff are PhD degree recipients, with 90% having study/working experience in well-known universities or institutes abroad. According to the principle of “focusing to both teaching and research”, “Employment opportunities planning of the School of Medicine of SCUT (2015-2020)” has been released. A total of 259 employment opportunititis have been opened, including 117 jobs for teaching & scientific research, and 142 job options for scientific research.

In the thoughts of “relying on the advantages, intensifying the priorities, combing medicine with engineering, and integrating basics with clinics”, the school has emphasized on undergraduate and postgraduate education, focused on talents recruitment, and recognized symbolic achievements as evaluation indexes. The strategy of “innovating the reform, adjusting the direction and differentiating the developments” has been applied and the principle of “developing specialized disciplines, consolidating basic disciplines and supporting newly disciplines” has been followed to build up a discipline system with strong basic disciplines, promising applicant disciplines, active inter-disciplines and growing newly disciplines.

The school has put the major demands of China and Guangdong province as the guide to layout the direction of discipline development. Undergraduate education has focused on the development of medical imaging, bioinformatics, clinical medicine and biological medicine (or preclinical medicine), and promoted international education. Postgraduate education has focused on establish primary discipline of master degree in clinical medicine, strengthen the inter-discipline integration of engineering & medicine and pre-clinics & clinics, and launched 3 medical PhD cultivation directions in the condition of primary disciplines of PhD degree in biology and biomedical engineering.

As the First Clinical School of SCUT, Guangdong General Hospital was founded in 1946. It stands as a leader in Guangdong and is one of the largest comprehensive hospitals in the country. The architectural area is up to 230,000 m2. And today, there are 5,226 hospital staff including 3,926 medical staff and 685 staff with senior professional titles (include 31 PhD supervisors, 117 Master supervisors, 119 PhD degree recipients). The hospital occupies 2729 beds, with the annual number of discharge and operation of 101,100 and 105,000, respectively. The number of outpatients of its 6 outpatient departments in 2014 amounted to 4.5 million. The First Clinical College has strong capability in its clinical practice, scientific research and medical teaching. It has 79 featured specialties/specialties and develops in an all-round way in cardiac surgery, cardiology for adults and children. It excels in cardiac surgeries and percutaneous coronary intervention, and manages severe and complicated cardiovascular diseases with a great success rate. It has been keeping the leading position in this field, making it one of the three biggest centers in the country. The lung cancer therapy is also taking the lead in China and Geriatric Institute is the largest center for geriatric prevention and treatment. Other specialties such as neurology, medical imaging and nuclear medicine are also the features of the hospital. It has 12 national key clinical specialties, 19 Guangdong key clinical specialties, 7 Guangdong key disciplines, 4 Guangdong key laboratories.

The School of Medicine implements educational reforms by encouraging young scholars to undertake highly sophisticated international research projects, and fully supporting them with the best resources and greatest efforts. Dr Jin Xin, a 27-year-old teacher, has achieved outstanding accomplishments in the field of genomic science, new generation sequencing technology, bioinformatics analysis and translational medicine. He published 7 journal articles as first/co-first author and 14 as co-author including those entitled “Sequencing of 50 Human Exomes Reveals Adaptation to High Altitude”, “Whole-genome Sequencing in Autism Identifies Hot Spots for De Novo Germline Mutation”, “A Large-scale Screen for Coding Variants Predisposing to Psoriasis” in the top international authoritative journals, such as Nature, Science and Cell. Now the school maintains good momentum in its scientific research. The distinct advantages in engineering technology (e.g. materials, information, control, computation and mechanisms) have been widely applied into clinical management and scientific research, such as medical imaging, life detection, biomedical science, medical information processing. These cross-discipline and cross-sector research have established the foundation for the prosperous future of the school.

The School of Medicine has substantive collaborations and intercommunications with many famous universities at home or aboard since its establishment. Proposals of cooperation have been made in various aspects, such as setting up joint research laboratories, academic exchange, joint-education for undergraduate and graduate students, and joint research fund application. The partner universities include Johns Hopkins University of USA, Humboldt University of Berlin of Germany, University of Western Australia, University of Paris Descartes (Paris V) of France, Cardiff University of UK, Tohoku University and Tohoku Pharmaceutical University of Japan, etc.

The School of Medicine has set "high starting point, internationalized, research-oriented" as the education philosophy. It integrates the comprehensive advantages of SCUT in disciplines, teaching resources and platforms, along with the strong capability of the First Clinical School (Guangdong General Hospital and Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences) in terms of its clinical practices and research. The School of Medicine and its affiliated hospital persist in combination of clinical services, scientific research and medical training, and endeavor to explore new approaches to cooperate with top-ranking hospital. The school aims at intensively cultivating talents in medicine major, with innovation potentials and international competitiveness.