What is Bioengineering?
Bioengineering combines the fields of biology, medicine and engineering and takes us into a science fiction future.
Imagine scanners and sensors transmitting medical data from a sick child in an African village to a physician in Washington D.C., who diagnoses the child's rare illness from a great distance...
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...or imagine artificial materials that grow seamlessly with living flesh and bone to recreate missing arms and legs
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...or sound waves that perform surgery without a scalpel
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...or tiny implanted machines that allow the deaf to hear and the blind to see
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...or a substance that becomes stronger under force and weaker when the force is removed.
Bioengineers are working every day on ideas, machines, and materials that will make the fantasies of science fiction a reality.
The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington has many different laboratories run by scientists who work on ideas such as these. Graduate and undergraduate students assist our scientists. We have organized our research and education around five different themes.
There are many kinds of labs. There are chemistry/biology labs that work with organic substances, electrical/mechanical labs where machines and their parts are planned and built, animal research labs in which experimentation is done on research animals under very strict conditions, and computer labs that look much like any office environment.
Scientists in these different labs work together to improve medical treatments and health care delivery. As they share insights and techniques, each discovery becomes part of a larger picture until a new invention or medial breakthrough is achieved. Today it is no longer science fiction to live with an artificial ear. Perhaps someday a human being will re-grow a liver or a leg as easily as a fingernail, and diagnosis and treatment will take place with the wave of a small device held in the hand.