HISTORY:

The School of Ecology and Applied Meteorology (SEAM) of NUIST was founded in 1960 by Prof. Xiuzao Feng, a famous agricultural meteorologist in China. It was renamed from its original name of Department of Agricultural Meteorology (1960) to Department of Applied Meteorology in 1989. It became School of Applied Meteorology in 2006, and finally adopted its current name (SEAM) in 2023. SEAM hosts the Committee of Agricultural Meteorology and Ecological Meteorology of Chinese Meteorological Society.

MAJOR AND DISCIPLINES:

SEAM currently offers four undergraduate majors: Applied Meteorology, Ecology, Agricultural Resources and Environment, and Smart Agriculture. Of all, Applied Meteorology has been an A++ major for more than ten consecutive years and ranks first among similar majors at national level.

It also hosts four master's degree disciplines in Applied Meteorology, Ecology, Agricultural Resources and Environment, and Agriculture, and three doctoral degree disciplines in Applied Meteorology, Environmental Ecology, and Carbon Neutrality Science and Technology.

STUDENTS AND FACULTY:

Currently, SEAM has about 1150 full-time students, including 710 undergraduate students, 410 postgraduate students, and 30 international students. There are 110 full-time faculty members, including 32 professors and 38 associate professors, with more than 30 distinguished scholars such as Ministry of Education Special Professor and National or Provincial Distinguished Scholars. All full-time teachers have doctorates and 60% of them have studied or worked abroad for at least one year.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH:

SEAM has three Science &Technology innovation teams, namely “Terrestrial Carbon & Water Cycle and Climate Change”, “Environmental Effects of Human Activities”, and “Agriculture and Eco-Environmental Meteorology”. There are four provincial or ministerial-level scientific research platforms, such as the “Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Carbon Source and Sink, China Meteorological Administration”, “Key Laboratory of Agricultural and Ecological Meteorology of Jiangsu Province”, “Joint Laboratory for International Cooperation on Climate and Environmental Change, Ministry of Education”, and “Collaborative Innovation Center on Forest and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters”. In addition, SEAMinitiated the “Yale-NUIST Center on Atmospheric Environment” in partnership with Yale University.

SEAM has formed 10 main research directions, including “Terrestrial Carbon and Water Cycle under Climate Change”, “Ecological Effects of Environmental Change”, “Atmospheric Environment & Isotope”, “Agrometeorology”, “Soil Carbon Sequestration and Emission Reduction”, and others.

In the past three years, SEAM hosted more than 20 national scientific research projects per year, with an annual average funding budget of national and provincial projects over 14 million RMB. The annual average funds from enterprises and municipal administration department exceed 10 million RMB. Over 200 papers are published annually, with more than 100 SCI papers in internationally renowned journals, especially in journals such as Nature, Nature Geoscience, Nature Communications, Nature Food, Science Advances, BAMS, and some were selected as highlight and cover-page articles.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

SEAM has established cooperative relationship with over 30 overseas universities, colleges, and institutes from more than 10 countries and regions, including Yale University, The University of Tokyo, University of Copenhagen, University of Reading, University of York, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, University of Eastern Finland, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. SEAM admission to such programs was facilitated by the Chinese Government Scholarship, Confucius Institute Scholarship, and Jiangsu Government Scholarship. SEAM also undertakes the international education and training task of Agricultural Meteorology in the Regional Training Centre of the World Meteorological Organization.

TALENT CULTIVATION:

SEAM has cultivated a large number of excellent talents, including the Director-general of China Meteorological Administration, an academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Sciences, a distinguished professor of Yale University, an IEEE fellow, and other outstanding alumni, as well as excellent meteorological technology personnel across China and the world. The graduates are mainly engaged in scientific research, operations, teaching, and management in meteorology and in different National Departments.