Im planning on attending Penn State Unuversity (got accepted) and I’m also planning on doing thinks with designing and creating medical equipment and prosthesis. Im going to do ME for undergrad and BME for masters. Would I have trouble finding internships in BME during my undergrad years (to build up my resume)?
Medtronics and Stryker post quite a few internship openings for MEs.
Love that you asked this because I’m literally going to do the exact same thing 
In my experience, for those companies, you have to be very convincing that you’re not premed. If they get any sort of hint that your goal is to go to medical school (which is true of a good number of applicants), it can easily result in an automatic rejection.
Im not going to med school, Im probably going to get my masters in BME part-time after my undergrad stuff.
Yes, it is difficult to find a BME internship because the BME “companies” just aren’t out there yet.
I think the more important point is that “BME companies” are things that don’t exist for a reason. Companies that do the typical biomedical type work need a mix of engineers just like anyone else. It is almost always more efficient to have mechanical engineers handle mechanical design, electrical engineers handle electrical design, chemists handle chemistry, and so on as opposed to trying to hire someone that tries to be a jack of all trades to handle all of the above. To me, it seems like typical BME programs go with the jack of all trades approach, and that is why they stereotypically have fewer job opportunities at the BS level. Once they go on to graduate school, that lets the specialize a bit more and makes the degree more marketable.
That’s my interpretation, anyway.
so where would I need to intern for prosthetics?
I don’t know, have you Googled what companies make prosthetics?
My cousin makes prosthetics and she didn’t have a degree. She trained in a Texas hospital that had a contract with a small company that was experimenting with prosthetics.
Now she trains others in that hospital and most of them are techs without undergrad or grad degrees. So I don’t know what to tell you. Google “prosthetics” and see what comes up.
Is there not a lot of pay in the field of prosthetics? I feel like its a small field and very limited in terms of how much I could make compared to doing something else in BME.
Whenever I look up a prosthetic company it comes up as orthotics and prosthetics, what is that? Is that the same as designing and making prosthetics? I feel like its more medical field related.
Orthotics are often devices to assist a person, not replace a part. Like an insert in a shoe, or a support brace.
From what I can tell, and someone correct me if I am wrong, probably the biggest part of prosthetic design is biomechanics. You’ll find that in BME departments, sure, but you’ll find it in an awful lot of mechanical engineering departments as well.
@jym626 @boneh3ad thank you , that helped a lot, so basically I should be fine with finding internships as an ME major whose looking to do prosthesis (which is a BME thing).
I think most O & P people are not engineers, but technicians trained in measuring and fabricating devices. This may help: http://www.opcareers.org
Well sure the people who fit and manufacture the things are probably just techs, but someone has to design them. This is especially true for the ones that have moving parts and try to, for example, mimic the functionality of the human ankle. There’s a lot of engineering that goes into some prosthesis, and a lot of it has to do with using mechanical design principles to approximate the actual biomechanical function of all or part of a missing limb. I had [a professor](Elizabeth T Hsiao-Wecksler | Mechanical Science & Engineering | UIUC) in my undergraduate ME program who did this sort of thing.
Bookmark the Penn State career center site - http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/career/
Start taking advantage of career fairs etc as soon as you get there. That will help you learn which companies recruit the most at Penn State. It looks like the first one is Sept 13-15.
Oh - there is also a more specific site for engineering - http://www.engr.psu.edu/career/
I agree that there’s lots of “engineering” that goes into it, I just don’t think it’s done by engineers per se. Orthotists and Prosthetists are trained within healthcare not engineering. The most famous leg to date, Oscar Pistorius’s Cheetah Legs, were not designed by an engineer, but rather an O&P guy trained at Northwestern http://www.nupoc.northwestern.edu/index.html. I’m not saying there’s no role for engineers and maybe engineers could add substantial knowledge to the process. Most of the way it’s currently done however is done by O&P specialists. I would certainly think that as things advance, especially to mechanization, engineering would have a big role. I’m just not sure what the OP wants to accomplish.
I want to build and/or design prosthesis and medical devices.