Recently the Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School (Tsinghua SIGS) Institute of Biopharmaceutical and Health Engineering (iBHE) was officially established.
Working closely with industry, the iBHE will foster interdisciplinary cutting-edge research supported by engineering disciplines, and promote the development of China’s emerging health industry. It will also nurture talents to explore the frontiers of human health technology and engineering, to meet the national policy of "Healthy China" and the needs of the Greater Bay Area.
According to Professor Xing Xin-Hui, Vice Director of iBHE, the philosophy of "openness, cooperation, sharing and integration” will promote an interdisciplinary atmosphere at the institute. The working teams that run iBHE consist of experts from different disciplines, and an open and shared research platform is being created. “Scientists joining the institute will not need to worry about scientific equipment as well as space, and can focus on their research and education,” said Prof. Xing.
Vice Director of iBHE, Prof. Xing Xin-Hui with student in the laboratory
The Institute has also established cooperative relations with research institutions and enterprises such as Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, Pengcheng Laboratory and key companies. In terms of international collaboration, Tsinghua University and Imperial College London have signed a Memorandum to cooperate in vaccine engineering, which will promote the application and transformation of the scientific achievements of Imperial College in Shenzhen, as well as the development of Shenzhen's vaccine industry. Joint graduate training with the University of Tokyo and the Tokyo Institute of Technology is also expected to be initiated in the near future.
A delegation from Tsinghua University visited Imperial College London in June 2018
The "Tsinghua-Imperial College Seminar on Vaccine Engineering" was successfully held in Shenzhen in November 2018
The iBHE will focus on two key bottleneck issues in its development – “preventive treatment” and “prevention from the disease source”. At present, its five major research directions include innovative drugs, vaccine engineering, health engineering, translational medicine, and life big data. The iBHE plans to expand its number of principal investigators (PIs) to 65 by 2025, and to 100 by 2030.
Editor: John Olbrich
