There are a lot of reviews on CS at UT Dallas but I can’t seem to find any on biomedical engineering. S has got accepted into this (international student, non premed track). Wondering if anyone could comment on this department, please! Are the internship and research opportunities good? Thanks!
I don’t know much about the bioengineering dept. but I do believe it is a newer dept. They just completed a new facility for it that opened in 2015. The school overall promotes research and internships and I can’t imagine that being any different in bioengineering. You could ask on the reddit board for more student feedback.
I am a current BME student at UT Dallas. The BME program at UTD is fairly new. It just received ABET approval, I believe, last year. Before I matriculated, I spoke with the head of the bioengineering department, Dr. Robert Rennakar, who later on became my professor for my Introduction to Bioengineering I class. He emphasized that his goal for BME students is that, by the time they graduate, they should be able to come up with a device, design it, make it, and implement it. So the program is very electrical/mechanical focused, in that we learn a lot of breadboarding, coding (LabView, MatLab, Solidworks), etc. The professors I have had so far are okay. The intro classes kind of weeds students out as the classes are focused on worksheets and students figuring the concepts by reading the background info on the worksheets with explanation from the professor if needed (but you must ask).
For me, I am switching out of BME because I am also pre-med and this BME program is NOT good at all for students who want an engineering degree and go on to medical school. There are no free electives in the BME program unless students either receive credit for core classes (government, history, english, literature, etc) from AP/IB scores so if you want to pursue a minor or take some other classes like another language, don’t do BME.
ALSO, the degree is very much focused on biomechanics, biosensors, robotics, biomaterials and bioinstrumentation. If your S wanted to go more into tissue engineering or neuroengineering, don’t come to this school. I also got accepted to BME program at UT Austin, but I turned it down in favor of the money. However, if another school has tracks for BME, go to that school. At UT Austin, BME is the same core classes for the first year and half before students can diverge into four different paths, each focusing on a special subsection of BME. UT Dallas does not have that. You’re kind of taught the biomechanics, biosensors route and you’re forced to be on that route. Perhaps the upper-level classes explore other subsections of BME more, but from my experience taking the two intro classes, it seems to be mostly focused on the electrical and mechanical engineering side of BME.
TL:DR; go to UTD if you want to work with machines (like MRIs, etc), robotics, and devices (like pacemakers), but don’t go if you’re planning to pre-med with BME or if you’re more interested in the biological side of BME (like tissue engineering).
As for the internship and research opportunities, the Biomedical Engineering Society has worked very hard to provide an internship/job fair each semester where ONLY biomedical engineering companies are present as school hosted internship/job fairs mostly focus on CS/CE/ME/EE majors.
From what I’ve heard, there are plenty of research opportunities at UT Dallas. UTD is trying to become a tier 1 research school (I think they achieved that status recently) and there are two buildings that are specifically for research of which one is called the Bioengineering Science Building. I believe there are 5-6 labs on campus for biomedical research. However, I’m not too sure as most of the labs overlap with other majors.
Thanks so much for the detailed answer! He wouldn’t be on a pre-med track but is interested in biomedical research (not sure if it is encouraged at undergrad level though). Will write to find out about the subsections that you’ve mentioned. Thanks again!
Thank you!