Under the request of Marshal Rongzhen Nie and China’s renowned chemist Shixian Yang, the State Key Laboratory of Elemento-organic Chemistry (SKLEOC) was founded by pioneering Chinese scientists including organic chemist Prof. Ruyu Chen and pesticide chemist Prof. Zhengming Li. Established in 1985, the SKLEOC was examined and accepted by the state government and officially opened to the public in 1987. The SKLEOC stands as one of the first state key laboratories of the China.

Presently, the SKLEOC is staffed with 52 full-time research fellows, including four academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,  ten laureates of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and two innovative research groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The SKLEOC also includes an academic committee composed of 17 well-established chemists from different research institutes of China.

Backed by two state key disciplines，namely organic chemistry and pesticide science, the SKLEOC specializes in the development of new synthetic methods and strategies; the invention of new drugs, catalytic materials, new organic functional materials; the studies on the fundamentals of pesticide chemistry and chemical biology, and the synthesis of proprietary new-type green pesticides.

The SKLEOC has handled numerous of state key fundamental research projects. Various scientific achievements have made tremendous contributions to development of China’s organic chemistry and pesticide science. These accomplishments were well recognized with national, provincial, and ministerial-level awards. By now, the SKLEOC has grown into a world-renowned research institute of organic chemistry and pesticide science, living up to the state government’s requirement that SKLEOC shall develop into base, of scientific research, talents, and academic exchanges. In the state council’s assessment of key disciplines of national institutions of higher learning that took place respectively in 2001 and in 2007, SKLEOC’s two pivotal disciplines, namely organic chemistry and pesticide science, both ranked the 1stplace amongst domestic counterparts. Ever since its foundation, the SKLEOC has always clung to its motto of “Opening, Flowing, Cooperating, and Competing”. The institute carried out the “Administrative Measure for Development of State Key Laboratories”, and made definite the working guideline of “Focusing on talents, centering on scientific research”. The SKLEOC had made remarkable achievements in scientific research, team building, opening-up, talent cultivating, and academic exchanging. The SKLEOC passed assessment of the State Development Planning Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology respectively in 1990, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014.