Bioengineering
Major
The bioengineering undergraduate program focuses on two key goals: 1) Engineering new biological systems and functions, and 2) Applying engineering principles to learn principles of biological design. Students explore engineering principles, biotechnology, and fundamentals from the biological sciences through coursework on physical cell biology, systems biology, biomolecular engineering, biodevice design, and synthetic biology. Students graduate with a strong experimental and computational foundation for careers or further study in bioengineering, biotechnology, biomedicine, biological data analysis, and the expanding universe of biology-related disciplines and industries. The Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center supports bioengi neering research through the funding of fellows and research projects across many disciplines.
Bioengineering Coursework at a Glance
BE 107. Exploring Biological Principles Through Bio-Inspired Design. Students will formulate and implement an engineering project designed to explore a biological principle or property that is exhibited in nature. Students will work in small teams in which they build a hardware platform that is motivated by a biological example in which a given approach or architecture is used to implement a given behavior. Alternatively, the team will construct new experimental instruments in order to test for the presence of an engineering principle in a biological system.
Only here could I convince students from very different disciplines (engineers, chemists, biochemists, molecular biologists, and computational scientists) to throw their hat into this ring and this completely unexplored field, and contribute their creativity to this kooky idea that you could breed proteins like you can breed cats and dogs. And only here would I have been challenged to solve ever harder problems.