The Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), founded in 1958, is the first department majoring in "Automation" in China. Located in Hefei, Anhui Province, the department has two campuses-the western campus and high-tech zone campus covering 7600 km² modern scientific researches buildings. Providing the undergraduate students with "Automation" as their majors, the department is one of the first batch of national first-class undergraduate major construction sites. There is a first-level discipline doctoral program and post-doctoral mobile station for Control Science and Engineering. Directed under its first-level discipline Control Science and Engineering, it sets up 7 second-level disciplines designed for scientific researches and post-graduates’ cultivation, i.e. Control Theory and Control Engineering, Detection Technology and Automation Device, Systems Engineering, Pattern Recognition and Intelligent System, Navigation, Guidance and Control, Network Transmission System and Control, Information Acquisition and Control.

The Department of Automation pays great attention to its faculty’s academic development. Including the faculty from the IIM, CAS, it now has 1 Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 51 faculty awarded the senior professional title (20 full-time faculty), 54 named the deputy senior professional title (36 full-time faculty), and other 16 staff members. Among them, 3 faculty members have been achieved "the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars", 3 "the Science Outstanding-Youth Project Funding from National Natural Science Foundation of China", 1 "the Young Changjiang Scholar Award Program", 6 "the New Century Excellent Talents Support Program of Ministry of Education", and 1IEEE Fellow.

Guided by the "Combing Institutes with the departments of the University" to support development, the Department of Automation has shouldered many national vital research tasks. Acting as the construction developer for both the National Engineering Laboratory for Brain-inspired Intelligence Technology and Application and the CENI-HEFEI, it leads to achieve a series of high-level scientific and research fruits. In addition, it has educated generations of talents for our country. Alumni Huixing Gong and Tao Mei have been elected as the Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Canadian Academy of Engineering respectively, with another 16 IEEE Fellow.