The department of Biology of Tongji University was originally established in 1937, which was later closed down due to mergence into other university. In 1996, Tongji University rebuilt the department with the title “School of Life Sciences and Medical Engineering”. It was officially renamed as “School of Life Sciences and Technology” in 2002; meanwhile it was approved by Ministry of Education and State Development Planning Commission as one of the National Life Sciences and Biotechnology incubators. According to the Competitiveness Rankings of key universities in China issued by Wuhan University in 2014, the department of Biotechnology of Tongji University has been rated as 5-star level. 
        Our school is basically organized into three paralleled structures: departments, research institutes and key laboratories. It consists of 3 departments: Department of Biological Medicine and Biotechnology, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Department of Bioinformatics; 1 research center: Protein Research Institute; as well as 1 key laboratory: Shanghai Signal Transduction and Disease Research Key Lab. 
        Our school currently enrolls 85 teaching and administrative staff members, among which there are two academicians of Chinese Academy of Science (including 1 flexibly introduced), two hold the Cheung Kong Professorships endowed by Ministry of Education, two have been awarded the National Outstanding Young Investigator Scholarship, four principle investigators in “973 Program”(projects from the National Basic Research Program of China), one Oriental Scholar granted by Shanghai Municipal Government, and ten have been listed in the “Pujiang Talent Plan”. We own 32 professors, 27 associate professors, 14 part-time professors, 4 chair professors, 2 visiting professors and 1 advisory professor.  
        Our school has first-level discipline doctoral station in Biology, master station in Biology and Biological Engineering, postdoctoral research station in Biology and Biological Engineering. With the strong support from the national “985”, “211” project and Tongji University, the discipline construction in our school has witnessed rapid development. The research directions focus on biological medicine and translational study on mechanism of major disease. Our basic research fields cover molecular biology, cellular biology, developmental biology, stem cell and epigenetics, as well as bioinformatics, etc. In recent five years, our school has obtained various kinds of national and municipal project support with the total research funds reaching 100 million, such as 973, 863 key programs by the Ministry of Science and Technology, program by the Ministry of Education, program by National Natural Science Fund, projects by the Shanghai municipal science commission and Shanghai municipal education commission. Our school has made great achievements in the areas of study of cell signaling of major disease, animal toxin protein research, model biological study on human gene functions and disease, TCM informatics, Nano medicine research, etc.
        Our school sets up two specialties of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics for undergraduate programs. It is the pilot unit for “National science outstanding basic science training base in Tongji University and adopts the elite cultivating mode of “2+1+X” (2 years’ general education, 1 year’s basic courses in Biology and professional education, 1 year’s internship prior to graduation or directly pursuing Ph.D. degree). 50% of the undergraduates in our school can acquire the admission qualification of MA/Ph.D. program without sitting for the entrance examination. The proportion of enrolled undergraduates and graduates is about 1:1. Those outstanding BA and MA candidates will have plenty of opportunities to participate in global exchange programs or pursue further studies abroad. 
        Our school has maintained good cooperation with lots of famous higher education institutes at home and abroad. Our long-term partners include Tubingen University (Germany), with which we have well established the system of mutual recognition of credits, and Swiss federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, etc. Moreover, each year our school sends students to Harvard University for short-term or long-term exchange. Most of the professors employed in our school have overseas education and research background, thus strongly promoting our cooperation with internationally renowned universities like Harvard, Yale, UC Berkley, etc.