The program is administered by the Joint Biomedical Engineering Faculty Committee. Students enroll and degrees are awarded through participating academic units authorized to award Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in engineering. For the Ph.D. these are the participating Schools of Engineering at West Lafayette (Chemical, Electrical and Computer, Mechanical); for the MSBmE they are theses schools plus the School of Engineering and technology in Indianapolis. Acceptance of a student into the Biomedical Engineering Program requires acceptance by both a selected School of Engineering and the Joint Biomedical Engineering Faculty Committee. In this manner, support in the form of teaching assistantships, research assistantships, and fellowships are available from a number of sources. Students enrolled in the program are encouraged to take courses and have research experiences on both the West Lafayetts and Indianapolis campuses, including for Ph.D. students a required experience in clinical medicine in either the Indiana University School of Medicine or Dentistry. Since a philosophy of the program is that biomedical engineering training must be well-grounded in the fundamentals of engineering, doctoral students must complete entrance requirements that include a biomedical engineering component in their selected School of Engineering, while pursuing an educational program that broadens to meet the needs of their thesis and long-term career goals. The graduates of this program are able to use their rigorous engineering and life science backgrounds to design, develop, and implement cutting-edge biomedical technologies in industry, academia, and clinical medicine.
Research Opportunities. The diversity of faculty that participate in the program provides a wealth of research opportunities that span the field of modern biomedical engineering. These include bioelectromagnetics; biological signal and image processing; biomaterials; biomechanics; biomedical acoustics, control, and optics; medical instrumentation, and tissue engineering.
Prerequisites. Typical applicants to the Biomedical Engineering Program have an undergraduate degree in an engineering discipline. Outstanding students with degrees in related fields such as physics, chemistry and biology can also be admitted to the program with the expectation that the deficiencies in engineering and/or mathematics will be remedied early in their graduate careers.
Program of Study. Students in the Biomedical Engineering Program are encouraged to choose a highly interdisciplinary plan of study and perform research that extends beyond traditional engineering lines into the biological and medical fields. A requirement of the MSBmE program is thesis research that serves to provide the student with a significant investigatory experience at the interface between engineering and the life sciences. In addition to thesis research, requirements for the Ph.D. program include successful completion of: the doctoral qualifying examination with a biomedical engineering component in a selected School of Engineering; the Principles of Biomedical Engineering I and II courses; and an experience in human medicine or dentistry that is tailored to the needs and interests of the students. It is expected that doctoral students will perform highly unique thesis research with clear applications to solving important problems in modern biology, medicine, or dentistry.
Financial Assistance. Financial support is available for qualified students in the form of graduate teaching assistantships, research assistantships, and fellowships. Admitted students will be considered for financial support both through the program and through their selected School of engineering. In addition, the Joint Biomedical Engineering Faculty committee will assist admitted students or applicants who wish to apply for fellowships sponsored by external agencies.