The department of chemistry was firstly established in 1928 and re-established in 1979. In recent years, under the support of national “211”and “985” projects, the department has obtained a huge self-improvement, promoting  the spirit of  “ keep pace with the times ” and the school running characteristics of  “ base on Shanghai, serve the country, face the world ”.

At present, the department has two doctor stations—Applied Chemistry and Polymeric Chemistry and Physics, and four master stations—Inorganic Chemistry, Organic chemistry, Analytical Chemistry and Physical Chemistry.

The department of chemistry has four teaching and research sections—inorganic and analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry and university chemistry  and its own basic chemistry lab center. Its properties of lab building with 11,514 m² area of structure and instruments worth more than 25 million RMB provide great experiment conditions and bases. Except undergraduate education, the department of chemistry also undertakes lots of teaching tasks about closely related major’s basic chemistry and experiment and remotely related major’s university chemistry and experiment.

The four basic chemistry courses, university chemistry course and experimental chemistry course are all top-level courses of SJTU, especially university chemistry course and experimental chemistry course, which have separately won the title of  “ Excellent Course of Shanghai ”  in 2003 and 2004.The department of chemistry has a top-level faculty, which includes one member of Chinese Academy of Science, one Changjiang Scholars Program professor, one winner of National Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scholars, one Dawn Scholar professor, one Pujiang Scholar professor, 10 professors and 20 associate professors. More than 70% of the teachers hold a PhD degree.

The research interest of the department of chemistry is basic science research, which has a close relationship with national economy, especially mainstay industry and an ultimate goal of serving the society. The department has been responsible for many national key projects, natural science fund projects, national “863” and “973” projects, Shanghai spark program projects, industrial projects and enterprise commissioned projects, obtaining outstanding achievements.

The research interests are as follows: new chiral nano-mesoporous material, nano material and organic-inorganic nano composite material, coordination and supermolecular chemistry, capillary electrophoresis and microfluidic chip analysis, environmental analytical chemistry, relativistic effects in chemical bond, density functional theory, fluorine radical chemistry,general molecular force field model, enzyme inhibitor pharmacology and computer assisted design, high-efficiency asymmetrical catalysis, metallic-organic chemistry, drug-organic chemistry, dye chemistry and photoelectrical functional material.

Top-level faculty, active academic thoughts, advanced experimental methods and devices are all helping the department of chemistry to get great achievements, improving its scientific level and expanding its international communication scope. In recent years, the number of scientific and educational cooperations with universities in America, Canada, Japan, Germany, UK and Holland are increasing and the reputation and profile of the department are also raising.