The Department of Bioengineering (BE) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was founded on June 4th, 2015, to promote the application of physicochemical principles to understand and then manipulate biological entities. The department was born out of an informal gathering of faculty at IISc who were pursuing research in Bioengineering. These faculty, led by Prof. Sanjay Biswas, established an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Bioengineering in August 2012 through a grant from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. The success of this Ph.D. program encouraged us to formally form the new department that would engage in world-leading research in the broad area of Bioengineering.