The development of School of Materials and Energy (SME) relies on two disciplines including “Material Science and Engineering” and “Thermal Power Engineering”. The first level subject “Material Science and Engineering” has been selected as the key peak discipline, the key construction discipline of “211 Project” and “High-level Universities” of Guangdong Province. “Thermal Power Engineering” is one of the characteristic key disciplines in Guangdong Province. In July 2017, the “Material Science” of SME entered the top 1% of ESI. SME has six doctoral programs in materials science, material processing engineering, material physics and chemistry, energy materials and engineering, polymer materials and engineering, civil materials and engineering. In 2007, SME was approved as a postdoctoral research station.

SME currently has a faculty and staff of 163, including 139 full-time teachers, among whom 34 are professors, and 73 are associate professors. The teaching staff includes 23 doctoral supervisors and 80 master’s tutors, more than 94% of the teacher bear Ph.D. SME has 2 shared Academicians, 1 National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholar, 3 National High-level Talents, 1 Pearl River Scholar, 2 Guangdong Province Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 2 Young Pearl River Scholars, 6 Guangdong Province’s “Thousand-Hundred-Ten Project” teachers, 1 Nangyue Outstanding Teacher, 1 Guangdong Province Innovation Team, 1 ESI Highly-cited Scholar, and 1 Special Support Plan for High-Level Talents of Guangdong Province. Since 2015, 64 young researchers have been introduced to SME. The proportion of young teachers under 40 is 57%, and 65% teachers have oversea study experiences.

SME consists of six departments: Metallic Materials Engineering, Materials Forming & Control Engineering, Polymer Materials & Engineering, Thermal Energy & Power Engineering, Microelectronics Engineering and New Energy Materials. Materials Forming and Control Engineering is a national characteristic specialty, excellent engineers training program of the Ministry of Education, provincial name-brand specialty as well as provincial comprehensive reform pilot specialty. The school offers "Material Innovation Class", "National Excellent Engineer Class" and "3 + 1 College- enterprise Joint Cultivation Class". The school also has 3 provincial quality courses and one provincial teaching team. Currently, SME has more than 40 Ph. D. candidates, 400 graduate students and 3200 undergraduate students.

SME has a provincial key lab (Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Functional Soft Condensed Matter), and a provincial engineering lab (Guangdong Provincial Engineering Laboratory of Storage Materials and Devices). SME also has a Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Materials, 12 R & D centers of Guangdong Province and 15 professional laboratories. There is one national material processing and energy engineering practice education center, one provincial teaching and demonstration center for materials science and engineering, and one experimental teaching demonstration center for material preparation and processing to intelligent manufacturing. The total laboratory area is about 13,500 square meters and the total assets are about 120 million yuan.

Since 2015, SME has undertaken more than 242 projects, including 42 National Nature Science Foundation, the actual scientific research outlay reached 156.88 million yuan. SME has published more than 326 papers in SCI II, including the papers published in Advanced Materials and Advanced Functional Materials with GDUT as the first author unit and 24 papers ESI highly-cited papers. 441 invention patents were applied, including 152 authorized and 11 PCT patents. One patent has won the National Excellence Award. 2 projects have won the second prizes of Guangdong Science and Technology Award and 1 project has won the second prizes of Guangdong Technology Invention Award.

The school actively encourages students to carry out scientific and technological innovation activities. The students of SME have won the silver medal in the 13’th “Challenge Cup” Guangdong College Students’ Business Plan Competition and the gold medal in the 14’th “Challenge Cup” Chinese College Students’ Business Plan Competition. Right now, we have built up long-term collaboration with some well-known universities for student exchanges, faculty visits and cooperative researches. A number of Ph. D. candidates joined the oversea training program every year. With the assistance of David A Weitz, who is the Academician of the American Academy of Science and professor of Harvard University, the "China Soft Materials Academic Annual Conference" was founded. In addition, we have seized the development opportunities of the “Belt and Road” and “Greater Bay Area”, and undertaken the key projects of the Guangdong Science and Technology Plan, the “Belt and Road” science and technology cooperation project and Guangdong province’s microfluidic technology and application international cooperation base for “Greater Bay Area”.