Overview
Understanding the human body and the processes that make it work is the next great frontier. At the Department of Bioengineering we are true pioneers, leading the world in transforming healthcare and blazing paths into uncharted territories of science and medicine.
Our mission: “To serve a worldwide leadership role in bioengineering research, education, service, clinical applications and technology transfers.” To live up to that goal, our students work together with bioengineering faculty from a wide variety of technical backgrounds on some of the most perplexing and challenging problems in the field. Driven by the ingenuity of our faculty and students, and with strong ties to the commercial and medical communities, the Department of Bioengineering is surging ahead, developing technologies and processes that will radically transform the healthcare of tomorrow.
And not for the first time. Nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Robert Rushmer’s groundbreaking application of ultrasound technology revolutionized diagnostic medicine. Today, Dr. Yongmin Kim is collaborating with colleagues in the Departments of Electrical Engineering, Radiology and Surgery to develop the next generation of ultrasound machines, using extremely fast, low-cost digital signal processors. Their work promises to lower the costs associated with ultrasound imaging while improving the effectiveness and accuracy of diagnoses.
Gaining valuable hands-on experience by conducting leading-edge research is a central focus at the Department of Bioengineering. All undergraduate students must complete a full year of research in one of five thrust areas: Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare (D2H2), Engineered Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, Molecular Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Computational and Integrative Bioengineering, or Medical Imaging & Image-Guided Therapy. A nationally recognized leader, we were recently awarded a new undergraduate training grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Trainees will be placed in clinics or clinical laboratories, co-mentored by both clinical and bioengineering faculty, where they will see the challenges—and the engineering opportunities—in health care, advancing medicine in ways that Hippocrates could never have imagined.
From engineering artificial esophagus tissue for throat cancer patients to developing cutting-edge molecular drug delivery systems, the research we do today will fuel new discoveries, treatments, tools—even businesses. In less than 40 years, we’ve risen to become a national leader in intellectual property generation with more than 200 patents and more than 400 invention disclosures. Our focus on research excellence and dedication to producing top-quality students at both undergraduate and graduate levels has earned the Bioengineering Department the distinction of consistently being the number-one recipient of NIH grants in the country and a global reputation as a world leader. Simply put, we are inventing the future of medicine.
