The School of Software at Shanxi University was established in 2003 and began recruiting undergraduates in 2005.

Currently, it only has one undergraduate program in software engineering, and cooperates with the School of Computer and Information Technology on a doctoral program of computer science and technology and a postgraduate program on software engineering.

Majors are developed to suit national economic information construction and development needs, and the demand for software engineering and technical expertise in the software industry. The academic ability of the graduates of the school should reach the level of programmers, software engineers or software project quality management personnel. It now has 2,242 students at the school.

Meanwhile, it has 49 faculty members, with four professors and 11 associate professors. Among the faculty members, six have obtained doctorates and 25 have master’s degrees.

The school has nine professional laboratories -- including a facility on computer composition principles, another on computer network technology, as well has a PC room. The total area of the laboratories has reached 2,600 square meters, and there are over 600 sets of equipment on hand.

The school attaches great importance to scientific research and technology development. Currently, there are four research teams and one technical development team: a Chinese information processing and machine learning research team, a computer vision team, an information security research team, a software reliability team and an applications system development team.

They have received several awards, including second and third prizes at the Shanxi Province Science and Technology Progress Awards, and first and second prizes at the Shanxi Teaching Achievement Award.

By the end of 2018, the school has published more than 280 papers in prominent domestic and overseas academic journals, such as the Neural Computation, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Pattern Recognition Letter, and Reliability Engineering & System Safety.

It also applied for nearly 20 national software copyrights and published 12 textbooks and monographs.

In recent years, the school has undertaken more than 30 projects -- including those from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Fund, the Shanxi Provincial Natural Science Fund, as well as the Shanxi Provincial Science and Technology Conditions Platform. The total project funding exceeds 5 million yuan ($710,000).

Additionally, the school has a “3+1” student training plan, which allows students to study academic knowledge at the school in the first three years and do an internship with enterprises undertaking software research and development in the fourth school year. The partners of the School of Software include Shanghai-based Briup Technology Inc, Neuedu Education Information and Technology Co, Beijing Qianfeng Software Technology Co, Shanxi Sram Technology Co and Shanxi Unique Technology Co.

The school also invites distinguished scholars and experts to deliver speeches and conduct academic exchanges every year, with Professor Li Jian from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Dr Tao Jianhua from the Institute of Automation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr Zang Genlin from the China Computer Federation as regular guests.