Founded in 1898, Northeastern is a global research university and the recognized leader in experience-driven lifelong learning. Our world-renowned experiential approach empowers our students, faculty, alumni, and partners to create impact far beyond the confines of discipline, degree, and campus.
Our locations—in Arlington; Boston; Charlotte, North Carolina; London; Miami; New York City; Oakland; Portland, Maine; San Francisco; Seattle; Silicon Valley; Toronto; Vancouver; and the Massachusetts communities of Burlington and Nahant—are nodes in our growing global university system. Through this network, we expand opportunities for flexible, student-centered learning and collaborative, solutions-focused research.
Northeastern’s comprehensive array of undergraduate and graduate programs— in a variety of on-campus and online formats—lead to degrees through the doctorate in nine colleges and schools. Among these, we offer more than 195 multi-discipline majors and degrees designed to prepare students for purposeful lives and careers.
The College of Science comprises six departments: Biology, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Marine and Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology. The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (“CCB”) (https://cos.northeastern.edu/chemistry-chemical-biology/) includes 38 tenured/tenure-track faculty, including joint appointments, 30% of whom are women; 25 full-time teaching faculty; two research faculty; and nine faculty with affiliated appointments. CCB enrolls approximately 150 undergraduate majors; 30 M.S. and PlusOne (BS/MS) students; and 100 Ph.D. students. In addition to degrees in Chemistry, a professional science Master’s degree in Biotechnology is also offered. The Department of Biology (https://cos.northeastern.edu/biology/) includes 25 tenured/tenure-track faculty, including joint appointments; and 26 full-time teaching faculty. With its core undergraduate degree programs in Biology and in Cell & Molecular Biology, the department enrolls around one-quarter of all undergraduate majors in the College of Science; it also co-manages the Behavioral Neuroscience major with the Department of Psychology. The graduate program in Biology currently has over 50 Ph.D. students in two primary concentrations (Cell & Molecular Biology, and Molecular Microbiology), including 15 Industry Ph.D. students who offer exciting partnership opportunities with pharma. In addition to degrees in Biology, professional science Master’s degrees in Bioinformatics and in Cell and Gene Therapies are also offered. The two departments co-manage the Biochemistry major.
Experiential education is a hallmark of our programs, where students gain experience at leading biotechnology companies based in Boston’s globally-dominant entrepreneurial space (Moderna, Editas, Gingko Bioworks, for instance). Northeastern’s integrative education model is ranked #1 in Cooperative education programs (US News and World Report: 2022) which leads directly to the remarkable career placement rate of 96% for our students. The Massachusetts campuses are physically located at the nexus of the largest concentration of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the world.
Northeastern is home to the Coastal Sustainability Institute, the Global Resilience Institute, the Barnett Institute for Chemical and Biological Analysis, the Center for Drug Discovery, the Network Science Institute, the Northeastern University Center for Renewable Energy Technology, an NSF Frontier Center in Theoretical Biological Physics, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Complex Systems, providing a rich multidisciplinary intellectual environment.