I am conflicted by which engineering discipline to pursue. My main interest is to develop pharmaceuticals. I have been trying to read the curriculum overviews for some of the colleges I have applied to for an idea on which which better for this, but both majors mention drug design in their descriptions. For example, one of my top schools is Lehigh where Bioengineering has three specialized tracks, one being biopharmaceutical engineering, yet the Chemical Engineering page also mentions pharmaceuticals.
Does anybody have any experience with this or have knowledge of which major is better for a career involving pharmaceutical development?
Biomedical Engineering has less to do with pharmaceuticals but more to instrumentation. Biomolecular Engineering would be more appropriate. Within Engineering, ChemE may be more related after Biomolecular. UIUC has them in one program ChBE. Interestingly, it is not inside the engineering school due to the historical reason and strength in Chemistry.
If you are interested in drug design and pharmaceuticals then Medicinal Chemistry is probably a better choice. Medicinal or Pharmaceutical Chemistry are disciplines at the intersection of chemistry, especially synthetic organic chemistry, and pharmacology and various other biological specialties, where they are involved with design, chemical synthesis and development for market of pharmaceutical agents, or bio-active agents. That’s the route I took many years ago. Medicinal chemistry is not an engineering related curriculum per se and is normally pursued in graduate studies (MS or Ph,D,) in Pharmacy/Chemistry departments
Agree with others - the engineering disciplines are more about process design. What you’re talking about is a scientific research discipline, probably at the doctoral level.
ChemE is a more traditional discipline that you will be studying in depth if you choose that major. BME tends to be a shallow survey of different engineering disciplines and how they can be applied in a biological context. At my school, most people who do BME have the intent to get into a health professional school rather than work as an engineer. If you are looking to actually work in industry, chemE is probably the better bet.