Westlake University has been formally approved by the Ministry of Education. The not-for-profit Westlake University is a vanguard in higher education reform in China and has been empowered by a set of government policies that are specifically designed to overcome the barriers of reform. Supported by philanthropists and the Chinese government, Westlake University aims to become a leading world-class university in research and education in about 10 years. Westlake University is preceded by the Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, which was founded by a group of scientists who were born and raised in China but received postgraduate education in developed countries. Westlake University has three schools: School of Life Sciences (covering all branches of modern experimental biology and computational biology and all branches of medical sciences), School of Science (covering mathematics, physics, chemistry, and emerging fields of sciences), and School of Engineering (covering all branches of engineering).