Medicine and Engineering

Engineering the Future of Healthcare

There is no greater engineering challenge than to improve human health.  You may have heard the saying:  "If you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far, go together."  Together the integration of Medicine and Engineering can take healthcare farther.  We aim to fundamentally change how we see, learn, innovate, implement and carryout the practice of medicine and the healing of people.   

Synergistic Partnership

Through this unique partnership, our goal is to realize the impact of engineering on medicine in the same transformative way it has shaped fields such as the technology sector and space exploration. This collaboration represents a significant leap forward to train the next generation of clinical and engineering visionaries as they advance the future of health care. We aim to accomplish this by: 

• Providing students the opportunity to customize their experience by choosing between commercialization, innovative research, or both.
• Integrating the analytic reasoning of engineering into patient care to bring forth a holistic differential approach to decision making in clinical settings
• Leading the way physicians will be trained in the future 
• Training bold innovators who participate in creation, interpretation, and presentation of medical data
• Developing medical practices that are appropriate for and readily accepted by rural communities.
• Establishing state-of-the-art, sustainable education models for the next generation of physicians to become independent learners 
• Continually reimagining and reframing inclusive teaching approaches that emphasize both technical and social considerations of patient care
• Providing a collaborative and interdisciplinary learning environment that promotes convergence in research
• Creating a culture of innovation and research development based in bio-inspired design, Big Data, and nanotechnology
• Building a dynamic service network that responds to challenges in healthcare at all levels; local to global

Program Outline and Coursework 

Students will take 12 hours of required coursework in the M.S. in Bioengineering degree program and 12 hours of elective MSBIOE coursework; 6 hours will focus on research.  Thesis students take 4 additional graduate courses that meet with the advisor's approval.  The engineering electives are very diverse in nature.  Students are encouraged to explore courses outside their specific undergraduate academic backgrounds.  Approval in advance by the advisor is required for each course selected under the electives category.  Many have been preapproved.