Biomedical engineering (BME) is a multidisciplinary field that applies engineering principles and design methods to improve the interaction and integration of engineering with medicine and biological sciences for advancing human health. The 4-year Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in BME undergraduate program is designed for students who aspire to engineer novel treatments, devices, materials, technologies, or processes to improve human healthcare. Students seeking careers in industry, the healthcare professions, government agencies, or graduate studies in BME are candidates for this program.
The curriculum provides students with a unique set of qualitative and quantitative healthcare problem definition, analysis, and solution skills. This program includes the shared freshman-engineering curriculum, foundational engineering courses and a variety of upper-level BME courses. To fulfill the curriculum, students complete a 2-semester interdisciplinary Capstone Senior Design project focused on the design of an engineering solution to a complex problem of interest to biomedical engineers and healthcare professionals.
BME and Product Design courses are intended to instill “design-thinking” in students. The curriculum is distinct from other B.S. BME programs due to integral design-thinking courses and experiences. These design-thinking experiences balance left-brain technical education with right-brain creative experiences to cultivate skills needed to: 1) communicate empathetically with all stakeholders in a design cycle; 2) frame healthcare challenges into engineering problems; and 3) design, prototype, build, test, refine, and implement solutions that solve contemporary healthcare problems and meet all user needs.
Consistent with our Mission Statement, the Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of Kentucky strives to produce graduates who will:
- Utilize their training at the interfaces of engineering, medicine, and design to solve problems related to health and healthcare.
- Engage in on-going learning related to biomedical engineering to update their skillset and contribute to the advancement of the field.