Biomedical Engineering or What?

College Majors
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<h2>I posted this on the engineering boards too but thought I might give this a try...</h2>

<p>In my ninth grade biology class (the teacher had just been in research) we discussed for a week the difficulties of curing something like HIV/AIDS. My class--which was on a much different level than I hope to be covering in AP Biology next year--talked about the signals that cells send to each other. My understanding of this was that viruses such as HIV invade the cell and then put up a signal of sorts that say the cell is already taken over so that it doesn't have to go back and conquer that cell again. (Yes, I know all the terms aren't technical and are very reminiscent of ninth grade bio.) So we thought that maybe if we could find a way for the cells to APPEAR to have been taken over (via the signal) than HIV wouldn't think it had to spread. </p>

<p>OK, so what am I asking?!</p>

<p>Well, I've been looking ever since that week in freshman bio to study this kind of problem more in-depth in college. The difficulty lies in figuring out which major it falls under. People keep telling me to look into bioengineering and biomedical engineering. However, all I can find on the websites for these departments is new findings in prosthetic limbs and machines. I am more interested in maybe inserting a chemical that will change the signal in the CELLS. </p>

<p>So, is this biomedical engineering or what?!</p>

<p>If it is, I'd love it if somebody could redirect me to a site or department where I could see a program of study that would allow me to focus on this sort of circumstance rather than machines or fake limbs. If it's not... well then maybe somebody could point me in the right direction of another department or program. </p>

<p>Thanks in advance.</p>

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<p>Biomedical engineering (BME) covers a huge area, and is an absolutely fascinating field to be in.</p>

<p>Here are examples of a couple of really good departments and what faculty are doing what. Pretty interesting to read about what they are all researching!</p>

<p><a href="http://www.eng.yale.edu/biomedical/research.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.eng.yale.edu/biomedical/research.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/cbe/www/thrust.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/cbe/www/thrust.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If you want to go into BME, you don't have to study it as an undergrad. Study mechanical, chemical, or electrical engineering, or physics, and then go to graduate school in the field. That way you might have a better, more specialized core knowledge and it will be easier to specialize in a particular area of BME once you're in grad school. As an undergrad, of course, it won't hurt to take a few BME courses.</p>

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<p>The area you described is more a microbiology / biochemistry one. Some schools like JHU, for example, have a chemical and biomolecular engineering major. Biomedical engineering mostly deals with medical devices and applying engineering to medical topics. However, there is a lot of overlap between biomedical engineering and other fields like chemical engineering or just biology (in topics like drug delivery, for example).</p>