The hospital also cooperates with institutions such as the Association for Medical Education in Europe, the University of Birmingham, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Chinese University of Hong Kong across a wide range of fields.

The Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology is located on campus in Zhuhai. It is a joint project with a French consortium for the training of civil nuclear engineers led by Grenoble INP-UGA, and was inaugurated in 2010.

The institute trains Chinese students who are to work in the nuclear field and in the Sino-French nuclear industry, with China and France having a long history of collaboration in the nuclear field, said Jean-Marie Bourgeois-Demersay, dean of the institute.

International students enjoy their campus life before the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Sun Yat-sen University. CHINA DAILY

Each year, it enrolls between 80 and 120 students and sends groups of Chinese students to France, who will join the partner schools. Many of them stay in France for their PhD program after graduation. The employment rate of the alumni is almost 100 percent, Bourgeois-Demersay said.

The institute has foreign teachers, mostly from France, who live in Zhuhai, as well as visiting foreign teachers, having received more than 50 visiting professors since 2010.

These make a good measurement of both the attractiveness and achievement of the program, he said.

Recently the collaboration was extended again to 2028, with a new master program implemented on nuclear application in the medical field.

"This is an important area for our future development and we believe it will be very attractive to our students," Bourgeois-Demersay said.

In 2020, the university and UNESCO agreed to set up a teaching post on sustainable tourism in UNESCO World Heritage Sites at the university.