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” initiative as well as Jiangsu High-level University Construction Project. During the year 2021-2024, it ranked around 50th among Chinese mainland universities and around 400th, 300th and 900th in U.S. News, ARWU, and QS University Rankings respectively.
STUDENTS AND FACULTY
Currently, NUIST has nearly 40,000 full-time students, including 29,500 undergraduate students, 8,400 postgraduate students, 1,800 international students and 450 exchange students. The university has over 2,400 full-time faculty members and more than 800 part-time teachers. Among them there are 2 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 26 overseas academicians, 2 IAA academicians, 111 national-level talents, and more than 500 provincial-and ministerial-level talents.
ADVANTAGEOUS DISCIPLINES
NUIST has a complete higher education system with undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral programmes as well as post-doctoral research centres and has established a harmonious discipline system of science, engineering, management, literature, economics, law, agriculture, art, education and cross-discipline.
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. According to the 2025-2026 U.S. News Best Global Universities Rankings, the discipline of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science of NUIST is ranked No. 4 worldwide. Ten disciplines, namely, Geoscience, Engineering, Computer Science, Environmental Science and Ecology, Chemistry, Agricultural Science, Material Science, General Social Science, Mathematics and Botany and Zoology have entered the ESI top 1% rankings with Geoscience, Computer Science, Environmental Science and Ecology, Engineering in the ESI top 1‰ rankings.
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
NUIST has established cooperative relationship with more than 170 overseas universities and institutions from all over the world including Yale University, Harvard University, the University of Reading, the University of Manchester, South East Technological University, Russian State Hydometeorological 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 160 countries and regions and become the world’s largest training centre of top quality.
NUIST has two transnational education institutions, namely, 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 its global partners.
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. Over 6,000 meteorologists and hydrologists from 160 countries and regions have been trained here. Many of the trainees have been the backbones of their National Meteorological and Hydrological Services.
CLIMATE COLLEGE
NUIST initiated the idea of Climate College in 2023 and has established 6 Climate Schools in some Belt and Road countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uzbekistan and Myanmar. The purpose is to cultivate local talents in the field of meteorology, information engineering, AI and related disciplines through long-term education programmes as well as short-term training courses by cooperating with our overseas partners.
International Association of Meteorological Education and Sciences (IAMES)
IAMES is a non-governmental, non-profit, academic and scientific organization, dedicated to international promotion and coordination of scientific studies and education on meteorology. IAMES encourages the application of knowledge to social needs, such as weather forecast, climate change, mitigation of natural hazards and environmental protection. IAMES is established to stimulate meteorological education and research, promote scientific and technological innovation, share high-quality resources, provide government policy consultation, and enhance the coordination ability to respond to major scientific issues.
