ME or "traditional engineers" working in BioE / BME / Biomed:

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>What exactly do M E people do in this field besides prosthetics? I have searched and most answers are vague like "biomechanics applied to the human body and medicine" or some other broad thing that still doesn't tell me much. I am interested in specific examples. Other specializations I can understand, like EE's do imaging and sensors and computing etc, chem E's are drug delivery and materials/tissure engineering.... M E is prosthetics ... is that it? I read many people here talking about many M E's working in this field, they can't all be in prosthetics ? Semi-related: Could someone end up working on artificial organs and the like with an M E degree or is that too much chem E oriented?</p>

<p>edit: if it helps I do plan on doing bioe in grad school, but am deciding between M E or chem E for undergrad.</p>

2

<p>Stents. They are a device used to open up blood vessels where cholestera has built up. I worked at a company working on those for a while, and there were several ME there.</p>

3

<p>mechanical heart valves</p>

4

<p>Oh yea, I should add, also besides engineering new medical instruments. Not to dismiss that idea, it sounds interesting, just wondering what there is besides prosthetics and medical instruments, if there is anything...</p>

5

<p>I'm a bioE and my research prof was an ME. We're currently working on the biomechanics of heart valves, as well as how MSCs differentiate into somatic cells via mechanotransduction. The two fields overlap in many, many areas.</p>

6

<p>ME spans a lot of bioE fields artificial organs, surgical devices, prosthetics, heart valves/stents, etc.</p>

<p>You can also get involved with the kinematics of the human body and study how we walk, swim and how to make better things like shoes to support daily living. Develop some new backpack to better distribute weight, etc.</p>

<p>I'm currently working on a project to figure out why eels evolved the way that they did, and why they swim in the manner that they swim in. This directly ties back to the human body as an eel is the simplest vertebrae and understanding how it swims, and why it evolved that way can be related to human spinal cord injury. So I'm taking a turbulent fluids problem that primarily deals with stability issues and linking that back to spinal cord injury in humans, seems like there are plent of degrees of separation to me, but there are so many weird/cool links between these fields that the possibilities are nearly endless.</p>

7

<p>How are MEs utilized in the BME field? In quite a few ways and in quite a few areas. I'm a BME who's worked in the medical device industry for a number of years. I work in the area of implantable pacemakers, defibrillators, and diagnostic devices. MEs are used in almost every aspect of the design and manufacture of any implantable device system.</p>

<p>MEs are used to help design the cans that house the implantable electronics. They also help design and test the electrical pass-throughs of the conductors into the headers and design the headers to incorporate lead connections and wireless telemetry antennas. They work on the connections for the leads into the header and help determine the best lead layout designs and the best way to connect the conductor filars to the the electrodes and connection pin. They are tasked with designing the electrode tips to ensure that battery power is minimized by lowering the impedance of the the tissue/electode interface. MEs also help testing of the designs and the design of the testing, sterilization, and packaging stations needed for manufacture under clean room conditions. </p>

<p>On the vascular and electrophysiology side of things, MEs help design better catheters to get to the various anatomical structures within the body and help design the stents, patches, snares, lasers, and EP catheters that are introduced within these catheters. With minimally invasive surgery and robotic surgery coming to the fore, MEs also help design and test the new micro tools so that they perform their intended function and provide adequate tactile feedback for the physician to perform the surgery while looking away at other monitors or screens.</p>

<p>On the orthopedic and spinal side of things, MEs design the implantable braces and fixation hardware used every day, as well as the sculpting and drilling jigs used during surgery to implant these items and also artificial knees and other joints. Viewing just one episode of 'Scarred' on MTV will show you how often these products are used, LOL.</p>

<p>In a nutshell, anything that is introduced into a body, from the lowly toothbrush, to the most advanced hemodynamic monitor, was designed, tested, and implemented by MEs at some stage in the game.</p>

<p>The trick is finding what interests you the most and pursuing the career.</p>

<p>Anyways, we BMEs are constantly competing against MEs or other traditional engineers for these positions.</p>

<p>Hope that helps,
-Scrubs</p>

8

<p>I've worked in drug manufacturing and drug delivery, and am a ChemE and operate as a process engineer.</p>

<p>MEs and EEs are plentiful in my world and operate as process engineers, manufacturing engineers, design engineers, and most important, IMO, controls engineers. What do they do? The design, optimize, spec, order, install, and troubleshoot manufacturing equipment and the facilities they go into. Yeah, it's nice when you get to design the actual product, but sometimes the equipment that makes the actual product is even more sophisticated then the actual product.</p>

<p>I've worked on implants, trans dermal devices, and injectable drugs and every project I've worked on has had at least one of each of a ME and an EE, as well as myself (ChemE). Most of the times the controls guy will be an EE and the facility and equipment guy will be an ME and the process/technology knowledge guy will be a ChemE.</p>

<p>ME, EE, and ChemE also have roles in supply chain management, QA roles, and validations (which I'm sure a lot of y'all are over looking). Validations is a boring field which every biotech/pharma/FDA regulated company needs. They basically make sure everything operates as it is intended. It's the UL of the FDA. It's dry and dull but can catapult an engineer into the industry.</p>

<p>Anyway, ME, EE, and ChemE are very important and integral in the Pharma/Biotech arena and similarly in the biomed areas.</p>

<p>Check out PDA (Parenteral Drug Association).</p>