Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. First, let us understand what bioengineering is. Bioengineering is the application of the principles and design concepts of engineering to the study & manipulation of biological systems and the development of biological products. It is a broad field of study that includes a very wide range of disciplines from biomedical engineering to agricultural engineering and bioprocess engineering to environmental engineering. Bioengineering is a rapidly advancing field with varied applications. Bioengineering professionals are playing a crucial role in improving human health and well-being for mankind globally.

Innovations in bioengineering, like most fields of science and technology, are driven by academia, often through the startup route. We are seeing more and more companies and startups come up in the bioengineering space, pushing the biomedical world to be more innovative and creative than ever before. The market is huge. According to McKinsey Research, apart from the transformational benefits to human health & well-being as well as a more sustainably managed environment, just about 400 bioengineering use cases, almost all of which are scientifically feasible, could have an economic impact of approximately $2 trillion to $4 trillion per annum from 2030 to 2040.

As technologies evolve, the pace of innovation in bioengineering is also accelerating. According to SynBioBeta – a professional network for biological engineers, investment in synthetic biology companies raised about $4.6 billion in the first quarter of 2021 alone! This is more than four times the investment in the same quarter a year earlier.