The School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Huazhong University of Science and Technology was founded in 1953 under the name of Department of Chemistry of Huazhong Institute of Technology. In 1981, the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physics were merged to form the Department of Chemistry and Physics. Later in 1983, the Department of Chemistry of Huazhong Institute of Technology was founded, with the undergraduate major of Applied Chemistry. Approved by the Ministry of Education, the undergraduate major of Fine Chemical Engineering was set up in 1993 (which was renamed to the major of Chemical Engineering and Technology in 1999). In November 2006, the Department of Chemistry of Huazhong University of Science and Technology was founded, and then the current School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of HUST was founded in May 2008.

Now the school has 141 faculty and staff, including 105 full-time teaching faculty. There are 65 professors and 34 associate professor, including 1 adjunct Academician, 1 foreign Academician and 2 Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Among the faculty, 2 received China National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scientists, 2 were listed in the New Century National Hundred Thousand-and-Ten Thousand Talents Project; 5 received China National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scientists. 11 have been selected as National Young Talents and 61 have been listed as talents of Hubei Province.

At present, the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering has 3 departments: Department of Chemistry, Department of Applied Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering and 7 institutes: Institute of Inorganic and Chemical Biology, Institute of Organic and Fine Chemical Industry, Institute of Analytic Science, Institute of Physical Chemistry and Industrial Catalysis, Institute of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Institute of Polymer Science and Engineering, and Institute of Chemical Engineering. There is also a Chemistry Experiment Center.

It has a Doctoral Station of Chemistry as first-level discipline (Science) and a Doctoral Station of Material Physics and Chemistry (Engineering). The first-level discipline Chemistry is the key discipline of Hubei province. The School also has two undergraduate programs: Chemistry and Applied Chemistry. The Chemistry major is elected into Top-notch Student Cultivation Program 2.0 in Basic Discipline and appointed as one of the national first-class undergraduate major construction sites.

At present, the School has about 650 undergraduates, 550 graduates and 15 international students. Since 2015, the School started to enroll students into experimental class of top-notch talents, which is subject to the cultivation system for top-notch talents of basic disciplines of Qiming College, HUST. Since 2017, the School started to cooperate with Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Institute of Physical and Chemical Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences to establish “Wu Xuezhou Elite Class” and “Chemistry Elite Class”.

The School has set up the Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage of Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry and Materia Medica, Hubei Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry and Service Failure, Hubei Engineering Research Center for Biomedical and Protective Materials and Hubei Popular Science Education Base; it has also co-constructed the State Key Laboratory of Material Processing and Die & Mould Technology, National Anti-Counterfeit Engineering Research Center, National Engineering Center for Nanomedicine, Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center, and Wuhan National Laboratory for optoelectronics.

The School insists on facing the major needs of China and focusing on scientific frontier and key areas to carry out research. Since 2008, the School has won more than 10 awards including the Second Prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award and the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award. Since 2016, it has published more than 1900 SCI papers, including more than 70 on world first-class journals (Science, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., etc.); it has about 360 authorized patents and undertakes more than 10 projects in National Key R&D Program of China and Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. It has 1 Innovation Group in Key Fields by MOST and 2 projects of Innovation Group of Hubei Province. Some research achievements have served national major projects and promoted the development of discipline and local economy.

The School has established the Innovation and Talent Recruitment Base of New Energy Chemistry and Device. Since 2016, it has signed cooperation agreements with the University of Liverpool, the University of Manchester, the University of Sydney and other high-level universities around the world. It has started the HUST & SKKU Bilateral Graduate Student Workshop and Annual Academic Conference for Graduate Student, and set up international joint research centers including Sino-US Joint Research Center on Liquid Crystal Chemistry and Physics, Sino-UK Nano Energy Material Centre, Sino-AUS Composites Science and Engineering Research Center, China-Korea Joint Research Center for Functional Polymer Materials and Devices. It has been training talents together with world-renowned universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Sydney. Every year, undergraduates and graduates are sent out to universities around the world to study or attend international meetings.

The Chemistry Discipline of the School has been improved steadily. In 2008, the Chemistry Discipline was ranked Top 1% by ESI. In May 2020, it was improved to Top 0.95‰ (123/1299), as one of the five Top 1‰ disciplines of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. By August 2022, At present, the Chemistry Discipline ranked 46^th by Shanghai Ranking, 53^th by Nature Index Ranking, and 96^th by US News.

Adhere to the school anthem of “Practice with Virtue, Discovery with Innovation”, the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering is committed to the mission of talent cultivation and scientific innovation, aiming to make Chemistry a first-class discipline in the world.

* Data by August 2022.