Located in Suzhou, a famous historical and cultural city known as the "Paradise on Earth", SUST is a full-time general university focused on engineering with the coordinated development of multiple disciplines. It has three campuses – Shihu, Jiangfeng and Tianping, with the main Shihu Campus nestled in a quiet and beautiful setting surrounded by mountains and waters. Covering an area of 2,300 mu, the university has over 23,000 full-time undergraduates and more than 4,400 postgraduates (including international postgraduates). Boasting a comprehensive range of disciplines, SUST meets the academic needs of international students at undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels. It has fostered three advantageous disciplines – Urban and Rural Planning, Environmental Science and Engineering, and Civil Engineering – and been listed in the ShanghaiRanking's Best Chinese Disciplines Ranking for six consecutive years. Four disciplines, namely Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Science and Environmental/Ecological Science, have entered the top 5‰ of ESI global rankings.

 SUST has a strong faculty, gathering high-level talents and teams at national and provincial levels such as members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, foreign academicians and National Distinguished Young Scholars. With 68 doctoral supervisors and 842 master’s supervisors, it provides high-quality classroom teaching and research guidance for international students. Attaching great importance to international cooperation and exchanges, SUST has established inter-university partnerships with more than 100 universities and research institutions in over 30 countries and regions.

Since 1993, it has hosted annual foreign aid human resources training courses sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of China, training over 3,000 officials and technical personnel in environmental protection, energy, logistics and other fields from more than 130 Belt and Road and developing countries, and offering them academic education. It became one of China’s first universities to undertake foreign aid master’s degree programs in 2015. Up to now, the university has educated over 300 international master’s students, with a current enrollment of 200, and been awarded the Advanced Collective for International Student Education of Jiangsu Province for two consecutive years.