College of Optical Science and Engineering (COSE)

The College of Optical Science and Engineering (COSE) at Zhejiang University is the successor of the Division of Optical Instrumentation, which was founded in 1952 as the first education & research base of optical engineering for college students in China. The first Dean was Prof. Zenglu He, who was the head of the Department of Physics. In 1960, the Department of Optical Instrumentation was established. The programs for graduates and PhDs were then built up in 1978 and 1984, respectively. In 1985, the post-doctoral workshop for optical engineering was also set up successfully. In 1988, Optical Instrumentation at ZJU was proved as one of the first batch of national key discipline. The department of optical instrumentation was renamed as Department of Optical Engineering in 1998. Later, the department had grown into the College of Optical Science and Engineering (COSE) with great successes in 2015.

Currently the college has seven research institutes, two research centers, two state key laboratories, two provincial key laboratories as well as two international joint laboratories. The college also have an outstanding training system for young people, including one postdoctoral workshop, three PhD programs, two graduate programs and one undergraduate program. Under these programs, there are about 120 undergraduate students, 110 graduate students and 50 PhD students admitted to the college annually. In the college, there are 45 full professors and 45 associate professors. All of them have strong academic and professional backgrounds and contribute to the development of the teaching areas.

With the great successes in the past 60 years, the college has a reputation for being a world-class institute with outstanding research & teaching for optics & photonics. It has become well-known as "the cradle of talents for optical engineering in China". In the past years the Minister of Education (MOE) of China organized two official evaluations for all the departments of optical engineering in China, and ZJU-COSE had been ranked No. 1 in China. In 1960s, the department had developed ultra-fast camera, which was awarded with the outstanding collectivity award at the first National Science and Technology Congress held in 1978. In 2008, the college won a national outstanding award of Science and Technology regarding to the significant contributions.