The Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering has once again been named the nation’s top graduate program by U.S. News & World Report. The 2026 rankings, released today, mark 34 consecutive years at No. 1— holding the top spot every year since the category was introduced in 1992.
“Maintaining the top spot for over three decades speaks to the culture of excellence that our students, faculty, and staff cultivate every day,” said Wojciech Zbijewski, associate professor and academic program co-director of the BME PhD program. “Together, we work to empower our graduates to translate engineering innovation into life-changing solutions for everyone.
Housed jointly in the Whiting School of Engineering and the School of Medicine, Hopkins BME offers graduate students a uniquely collaborative, interdisciplinary environment for discovery. Students work alongside world-class clinicians and researchers across the university while specializing in one of seven modern disciplines, from translational cell and tissue engineering to computational medicine, all aimed at addressing some of the world’s most urgent health challenges.
BME graduate students drive high-impact, translational research in fields such as cardiac modeling, brain-computer interfaces, medical imaging, and organoids-on-a-chip. Their work consistently earns national recognition; since 2019, seven BME graduate students have been named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30.” Students also frequently earn prestigious honors, including Siebel Scholar awards, Fulbright Scholarships, Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships, and Ford Foundation Fellowships.
Students are supported by highly competitive fellowships and grants, including awards from the NIH (F31), the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), the American Heart Association, the Quad Fellowship, and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. Beyond the lab, students translate their research into real-world impact by working closely with clinical teams and completing internships at leading companies such as Siemens, Amazon, IBM Watson, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca.
This latest recognition follows the No. 1 ranking of the Hopkins BME undergraduate program in September. Several other graduate programs within Johns Hopkins were also named among the nation’s best this year. Read more about the rankings on the Hub.