The Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Science (EEIS) was established in Beijing in 1958 with the founding of the University and named as Department of Radio and Electronics. Prof. Gu Dehuan, the former head of Institute of Electronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, was the first chairman of the Department. At that time, the department consisted of 4 specialties: Radio Technology, Radio Physics, Electro Vacuum, and Acoustics. From 1964, three specialties of Automatic Control, Computer, Remote Measuring and Control were added. In 1982,The Specialty of Computer, Automatic Control became other two independent departments. In 1993, the Department was officially renamed as EEIS.

The Department of EEIS has built up a competitive faculty with 21 full professors. At present, it has two specialties for undergraduate programs: Electronic Information Engineering and Communication Engineering. EEIS is authorized to confer PhD degrees in 4 specialties: Electromagnetic Theory and Microwave Technology, Communication and Information system, Signal and information processing, and Information Security. There are 2 post-doctoral fellow circulating stations. And the specialty of communications and information system is the national key specialty. It owns 2 Ministry-level Key Laboratories: the Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Wireless Information Network, and the MOE-Microsoft Key Laboratory of Multimedia Computing and Communication. There are over 10 research laboratories covering the area of mobile and network communications; speech signal processing; multimedia and flow media signal processing; image and statistical signal processing; electronic information system; electromagnetic theory and microwave/mm-wave/light wave technology; microwave/mm wave communication, radar and devices; acoustics and medical image processing, etc.

EEIS has been among the most attractive ones in USTC for the excellent freshmen every year. At present, more than 600 undergraduates, 280 master students and around 100 PhD candidates are studying in EEIS. An experimental teaching center involving communications, EDA, multimedia, microwave techniques and electronic system design is open to the students.

"Combining Science and Technology" is always the distinct characteristics of EEIS, and great emphasis is laid on both the teaching and research and every effort is made to bring forth new ideas as well as new developments in science and technology. EEIS conducts its teaching and research programs to ensure students having a broad and solid background in mathematics, physics, and extensive practice skills. It has become a unique tradition in the Department that senior undergraduates enter laboratories and are involved in research projects under teachers' advisory. By doing research, students have the chance to approach the frontiers of theory and technology. At the same time, they apply the theory learned into practice. This will greatly enhance their capabilities of analyzing and solving practical problems. Therefore, the graduates from EEIS have a good reputation for their solid foundations, broad horizons, strong practice capabilities and great potentials, and they are always welcome by research institutes and high technology industry both home and abroad.

For many years, EEIS has conducted a number of national key research projects, financed by National High Technology Foundation (Project 863), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and National Defense Council, etc. EEIS has contributed many important achievements in the important fields of mobile communication, network technology, speech processing, image processing, microwave/mm-wave and light wave theory and technology. It has won tens of national and ministry-level awards including 3 National 2nd Awards for the Science and Technology Progress.