<p>I've seen many threads that classify Biomedical Engineering under Bioengineering (and vice-versa) so I was seeking a some clarification.</p>
<p>Biological - Engineering on a cellular level</p>
<p>Biomedical - Traditional Engineering applied to Human Body</p>
<p>Bio - Facets of Both</p>
<p>Right ?</p>
<p>Anyone.... ?</p>
<p>From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioengineering%5B/url%5D:%5Bquote%5DBiological">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioengineering:
[quote]
Biological</a> engineering (also biosystems engineering and bioengineering) deals with engineering biological processes in general. It is a broad-based engineering discipline that also may involve product design, sustainability and analysis of biological systems. Generally, bioengineering may deal with either the medical (see biomedical engineering) or the agricultural fields (see agricultural engineering).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Furthermore:
[quote]
Biological engineering is called Bioengineering by some colleges and Biomedical engineering is called Bioengineering by others, and is a rapidly developing field with fluid categorization.
[/quote]
So don't expect consistent terminology between different programs at different schools.</p>
<p>millki you have the right idea (biomedical is classic mech/electrical/chemical engineering applied to the human body, bio/biological engineering is more on the cellular level)... really, they are all virtually indistinguishable in academia</p>
<p>this has been asked multiple times. please do a search of thread titles for these terms.</p>
<p>at the undergraduate level, there is essentially no difference</p>
<p>I did try a search but I either get no matches or an error</p>
<p>
[quote]
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 82 bytes) in /var/www/localhost/htdocs/includes/functions.php on line 51
[/quote]
</p>
<p>be sure to limit to threat title and the "engineering major" forum. google works too.</p>
<p>Thanks. I think I found some decent stuff</p>
<p>It all depends on the college. The fields are too new and too interdiciplinary for any definitions to stick. What is bioengineering at one school might be Biomedical Engineering at another. Some schools have both for historical/funding reasons.</p>
<p>So how can one know what is ? Look at the course descriptions ?</p>
<p>I feel like Bioengineering is more ME based, and biomedical eng is a little more physiology related.</p>
<p>I think it totally depends on what your concentration area is. For biomed you could be doing anything from motion analysis to cell-based therapies...Itd be nice if there was a way to see exactly what careers people go into afterwards, besides just product design. So many people in my class are going into law, which is not a bad idea.</p>
<p>"So how can one know what is ? Look at the course descriptions ?"</p>
<p>Yeah, that's exactly what you have to do. Every college has a different take on what BME/BioE means. Some schools have you take mechanics courses with mechEs, others have biomechanics courses just for BME. Some schools focus more on the engineering side of BME others focus more on the biological. Most programs have a core of basic general engineering courses and you can take electives to focus on the parts that you're most interested in (mechanics, electronics, signals, chemistry, etc...) The one thing you must look for is that the school had a good track record of placing BMEs since the field is much newer and smaller than the other disciplines.</p>
<p>in addition to looking at course descriptions, take a look at how the curriculum is structured. some schools (JHU comes to mind) literally force you to concentrate in another field of engineering as you study biomedical engineering. therefore, your courseload will start to look like one of the more "established" engineering fields (electrical, mechanical, chemical etc) and provide a good skillset for a job following graduation. other schools will provide a more balanced curriculum that will expose you equally to all the fields of biomedical engineering and provide a good basis for graduate school specialization. there are, of course, variations in the middle of those two extremes. (classic battle of breadth vs depth)</p>
<p>Personally, I chose a school with a balanced combination of breadth and depth because I know that while I am really interested in certain sub-fields of bioengineering, I don't intend to pursue a technical career...</p>
<p>Thanks again</p>
<p>recently had a chat with a chairman of UC riverside's bioengineering department-he says all are identical, just look at the research the faculty is doing to figure out a school's focus. or-the background of the department chair. for example, douglas lauffenburger at MIT is a cell biologist, therefore they're program focuses on the cellular level, whereas at Umich, the focus in BE is on electrical engineering.</p>
<p>Thanks niceilike</p>
<p>Would you say Rice's Bioengineering is geared towards Pharma a bit more?</p>
<p>from those links its hard to tell what the focus is, but the research focus won't have too much impact on the education, only on the research you participate in. usually within BioE they have concentrations, so see if those match your interests, and also check out the courses they offer.</p>
<p>They have a concentration in Cellular and Molecular Engineering but BioE's Core courses are focused on instrumentation</p>
<p>i wouldn't say that- from your list it looks like there are some tissue engineering core courses, thermodynamics is universal, and it seems pretty typical. there are 2 mandatory instrumentation classes, and then there seems to be out of the 4 that you have to choose 2 from the following:
BIOE 442<em>- Tissue Engineering Laboratory Module
BIOE 443</em>- Bioprocessing Laboratory Module
and the other two are mech/instrumentation. and then the electives are what matter-so it looks like a solid program for cellular, but the best way to do it, i think, would be to email some professors, or if possible get down there and talk to someone. also, bioengineering is bioengineering, once you do your undergrad, you can go to a school that has cellular/molecular as it's specialization and do your research in that field. but do talk to people at the schools-i'm just a high school student like you. according to the professor i was talking about these are his BioE suggestions:</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins
Univ. Califonia at San Diego
Utah
Georgia Tech
Boston University
University of Washington (in Seattle)
University of Michigan
University of Texas (Austin)
University of Pennsylvania
MIT
Berkeley</p>