Program overview
Bioengineering is an interdisciplinary field under the engineering category. Simply put, it uses living organisms (like bacteria, yeast, and cells) to produce useful products or solve practical problems in areas such as the environment and healthcare. At the graduate level, you will delve into core courses like molecular biology, genetic engineering, fermentation engineering, bioseparation engineering, and bioreaction engineering, while also mastering engineering design and data analysis skills. This major is especially suitable for students who enjoy both biological experiments and engineering applications—for example, if you want to know how to make yeast efficiently produce insulin, or how to use microorganisms to degrade plastics. Chinese universities have many distinctive features in bioengineering: Jiangnan University leads in fermentation engineering, East China University of Science and Technology is strong in bioreactor research, and Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University are active in synthetic biology. Many labs have international collaborative projects, allowing international students to access cutting-edge technologies.