The Department of Bioengineering (BioE) at The University of California, Berkeley, was founded in 1998, the first new department to be established in our College of Engineering in over 40 years. It was conceived to support and expand the successful UC Berkeley – UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, which was established in 1983 and continues to the present as our PhD program. The department serves as the sole administrative home for our Bachelor of Science (BS) and Master of Engineering (MEng) degrees, as well as the UC Berkeley administrative home (along with the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences) of the Master of Translational Medicine (MTM) and the joint PhD program with UCSF.
The BioE graduate and undergraduate programs are continually ranked in the Top 10 according to US News & World Report.
The PhD program also ranked highly in the 2010 National Research Council rankings, which are tabulated every 10-15 years and heavily data-driven (number of graduates, publications, research expenditures, etc.), in the #2 to #8 range by their Regression method, and the #1 to #6 range by their Survey method.
The bioengineering department is part of the College of Engineering, a world-renowned program consistently ranked in the top three overall engineering schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report. UC Berkeley as a whole has been ranked as the top public university in the world.
Our work drives the development of new medicines, medical devices, and diagnostic tests, as it answers pressing scientific questions—from how an individual’s genetic profile affects drug response to how we can use nanotechnology to build devices that replace the work of diseased organs. Using advanced computational and experimental tools, we work at the intersection of basic science and patient care.
At UCSF we educate science students in many PhD programs at UC San Francisco. We are closely involved with the five PhD programs administered by the School of Pharmacy:
PhD in Bioengineering (BioE)
PhD in Biological and Medical Informatics (BMI)
PhD in Biophysics (BP)
PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB)
PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics (PSPG)
We also ensure that our Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) professional students develop extensive knowledge of how and why medications act in patients. Our Master of Translational Medicine (MTM) program is designed for engineers, scientists, and clinicians who seek to bring innovative treatments and devices into clinical use.
Postdoctoral scholars add to the vitality of our department as they help move our research forward in innovative ways.
The scientist-teachers who advance research in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences are experts in fields from microelectromechanical systems to drug metabolism and transport, and from computational biology to personalized medicine. We believe this range of inquiry is essential to discovering the underlying mechanisms of disease and finding sophisticated new ways to diagnose and treat disease with intelligent therapeutics.
We are connected to the worldwide research community through a network of PhD alumni, adjunct and affiliated faculty members, and scientists in academia, industry, and government. We consider our donors—who share our commitment to finding better therapeutics—to be valued partners in our work.