The university is located on a 999-acre site at Sepanggar Bay in Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah.

With Mount Kinabalu and the South China Sea as its background, UMS is often considered as among the most beautiful campuses in Southeast Asia.

This was followed by the establishment of the School of Sustainable Agriculture in 2006 which subsequently relocated five years later in 2011 to the UMS Sandakan Campus, its current location.

[5] In conjunction with its 20th anniversary in June 2014, UMS embarked on a major academic transformation exercise whereby its 13 schools were restructured as 10 new faculties.

The university also maintained international collaborations within the ASEAN region, with Dr. Adi fahrudin from Indonesia serving as a visiting professor from 2015 to 2023.