Marking 36 years since its development and opening-up, Shanghai's Pudong New Area is deepening the integration of education, technology and talent in a fresh push for high-quality growth, betting that a stronger university base, faster commercialization of research and more open innovation networks will help power its next stage of development.

The strategy, outlined in Pudong's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), calls for demand-driven education reform, a stronger higher-education presence, deeper reform of science and technology governance, and tighter coordination across education, innovation and talent systems — a vision already taking shape across Pudong's 1,210 square kilometers, where leading universities have expanded into the district, research institutions have stepped up efforts to move breakthroughs from the laboratory to the production line, and an international open-innovation platform has helped companies tap global expertise to solve technical problems.

Top universities expand in Pudong

One sign of that shift is the reshaping of Pudong's higher-education map. Over the past year, the district has added several top-tier universities and cooperative institutions, broadening its academic base in fields linked to science, healthcare, advanced manufacturing and data-driven industries.

In September 2025, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine opened its Pudong campus, welcoming its 2025 intake to a 435-mu (29-hectare) campus. For the medical school, the expansion was about more than adding physical space. It marked a new phase in its multi-campus strategy and positioned the Pudong campus as both a base for cultivating medical talent and a platform for scientific innovation.

The school has said it plans to build the campus to high standards and use it to advance integrated reform across education, science and talent development. The aim is to use high-level research to support high-quality teaching and attract and train top talent in medicine and related fields.

Not far away, Shanghai University of Medicine & Health Sciences in March launched the Sino-Finnish International College of Health, a new affiliated college established with Finland's Laurea University of Applied Sciences. The institution began enrolling students this year and fills a gap in Shanghai's undergraduate-level Sino-foreign cooperative education in rehabilitation therapy as well as in data science and big data technology.

At the core of Pudong's innovation landscape, Zhangjiang Science City has become another focal point. On Feb 28, the University of Hong Kong's Zhangjiang Base opened there, initially bringing in HKU's School of Computing and Data Science. The base is expected to later expand into interdisciplinary research institutes in areas including intelligent computing, future electronics and intelligent manufacturing.

Peter Wong Tung-shun, chairman of the HKU Council, described the cooperation as a milestone, saying Zhangjiang's concentration of leading technology firms and research institutions makes it an ideal platform for deeper integration of educational resources from Shanghai and Hong Kong and collaborative innovation.

HKU President Zhang Xiang emphasized the surrounding industrial ecosystem. "There are 3,000 high-tech enterprises near the base, providing students with ample internship and entrepreneurship opportunities," he said. "Together with their professors, they can achieve the rapid transformation of research results on this land of innovation."

Later this year, Zhangjiang Science City is also set to welcome the first cohort of students at a new Sino-foreign cooperative institution, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Zhangjiang International College of Science and Technology. Jointly established by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, the college will offer six undergraduate majors in frontier fields: mechanical engineering, electronic and computer engineering, materials science and engineering, computer science and technology, information engineering, and data science and big data technology, with a planned total enrollment of 5,000 students.

Research moves from lab to market

A similar approach is shaping the district's push to commercialize scientific research. Pudong has been reinforcing the role of high-level research universities as sources of basic science, major technological breakthroughs and industrial innovation, while working to accelerate the translation of academic results into marketable technologies and products.

In March, the Center for Scientific Research and Development in Higher Education Institutes, Ministry of Education, released 25 national model cases of university technology transfer and commercialization. Two projects from ShanghaiTech University, both based in Pudong, were selected.

One project came from a team led by Professor Chen Jia at the School of Life Science and Technology and focuses on the development and commercialization of an original Chinese platform for DNA damage-free single-base editing technology. The other, led by Professor Cheng Jianjun at the iHuman Institute, centers on the development of a new-generation antipsychotic drug.

Their selection underscored ShanghaiTech's strengths in frontier biotechnology and innovative drug development, as well as its ability to move from basic research to application across the full innovation chain. It also highlighted the university's efforts to align its scientific work more closely with industrial demand and national strategic priorities.

Located in the heart of Zhangjiang Science City, ShanghaiTech has grown quickly over the past 12 years since its founding into a research- and innovation-oriented university focused on frontier science and technology. It has built strong disciplinary clusters in material science, life science and information science, while establishing platforms such as a biomedical engineering school, the Center for Transformative Science, the Institute of Carbon Neutrality and the Shanghai Clinical Research Center.

At the same time, ShanghaiTech says its mission is to serve national development priorities, cultivate top innovative talent and produce high-level research. The university has taken on major national scientific infrastructure tasks, with the Shanghai HIgh repetitioN rate XFEL and Extreme light facility (SHINE) making steady progress and reaching internationally advanced standards in key technologies developed throughout the full chain. It has also joined the development of Zhangjiang's comprehensive national science center, deepening its role in China's strategic science and technology agenda through talent development and research collaboration, while seeking to become an important base for high-level graduate education. In Zhangjiang's fast-growing biopharmaceutical cluster, ShanghaiTech has deepened cooperation with Sycamore Research Institute of Life Sciences under a "niversity plus research institute" model, bringing together top research capabilities and a frontier innovation platform.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine is pursuing a similar path. On Feb 19, two of its major research findings were published in the same issue of Nature, an achievement the school said was the first in its history and rare among Chinese universities. The papers focused on areas including artificial intelligence and the integration of medicine and engineering, as well as gene editing and brain science, and made breakthroughs in the diagnosis of rare diseases and the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Looking ahead, the medical school has said it plans to use the Pudong campus as a starting point for a broader life and health innovation network, drawing together 14 national-level scientific innovation platforms and the clinical resources of 13 affiliated hospitals to build a medical technology commercialization park. Through platforms for technology transfer, enterprise research and development, and startup incubation, it aims to build a full chain from basic research and clinical validation to industrial transformation, while helping close the gap between university research and industrial application and commercialization.

Global innovation platforms tackle industry challenges

For Pudong, deeper integration of education, technology and talent is both a strategic priority and a key driver of high-quality growth. The goal is to make education an incubator of innovation, technology an accelerator of industry and talent a core engine of development. To that end, the district has continued to deepen reform of its science and technology governance system.

It is also refining the way research is funded and organized, maintaining a model in which government provides guidance, enterprises take the lead and society participates more broadly. District-level natural science funds are being used to encourage greater corporate investment in basic research and improve mechanisms for targeted donations to science and technology innovation, while the open-call platform is being made more international, integrated and diverse, alongside experiments with new research models such as "crowdfunded" scientific projects.

In 2025, Pudong's international open-call platform began working with Wazoku, a British open-innovation platform, to expand its global network and help companies find solution providers for difficult technical problems. Soon afterward, the Shanghai Yangtze Delta Innovation Institute, which helps advance the platform, posted a technical challenge from a leading Shanghai daily chemical products company on Wazoku and invited proposals from around the world.

The response was wide-ranging. A total of 106 technical proposals were submitted from 45 countries, including the United States, Britain, Morocco, Germany and Singapore. A company executive quoted by official coverage said the platform gave the business access to high-quality overseas technologies and innovation teams, helping broaden its research and development horizons while supporting the introduction of advanced international technology and faster product upgrading.

So far, Pudong's international open-call platform has released more than 900 innovation projects with planned investment exceeding 1.5 billion yuan ($220 million), and more than 120 projects have been successfully matched. Officials say the platform is helping channel global innovation resources into Pudong while giving companies a more open route to solving technical bottlenecks.