Engineering flair refers to the creative and technically complex design of synthetic biological systems that emphasize novelty and structure, often without sufficient attention to biological relevance or therapeutic value.

• Use of modular protein domains, fusion constructs, and multicomponent systems
• Prioritization of elegance or innovation over practicality
• Lack of disease relevance, clinical scalability, or translational need

Often used pejoratively to highlight studies that overengineer a system for academic appeal rather than solving a real problem.

An extracellular vesicle engineered with five synthetic tags and viral fusion proteins may display engineering flair, but is not inherently meaningful unless it improves therapeutic delivery in a clinically relevant model.