Established in 1905, Fudan was named after a quotation from a Confucian Classic, roughly translated as “Itinerant as the twilight, sunshine and moonlight” defining the University’s motto to become “Rich in knowledge and tenacious of purpose, inquiring with earnestness and reflecting with self-practice.”
There are 27,000 full time students on campus, with 2,000 overseas students, over 3,500 faculty and more than 400 programmes of undergraduate and postgraduate study. The University has a number of research platforms in natural, medical and social sciences which are acknowledged by the Ministry of Education, along with five key national laboratories and nine affiliating hospitals.
Fudan has a strong and active research programme, which in recent years has discovered amongst other things a DNA recombinant vaccine against FMD and a therapeutic vaccine for chronic Hepatitis B. Since the 1950s, Fudan has enrolled international students, as one of the first few institutions in China to do so. Since that time, Fudan has accepted and trained over 10,000 foreign students from 100 different countries and regions worldwide.
Presently there are over 1,800 long-term international students in Fudan, half of whom are actively pursuing degrees with the remainder general scholars and visiting scholars. Fudan enrolls over 600 short-term students each year. Fudan fellows and alumni associations can be found in the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other parts of China. The University works collaboratively with a number of leading universities throughout the world in a range of disciplines.
Fudan University hosted the U21 Annual General Meetings in May 2000 and April 2005. By collaborating with all the member universities, Fudan hopes to enhance student mobility and continue building a world-class university.