The Fastest Growing Engineering Degree

[Steve.J]

The ASEE reported in October that Biomedical Engineering is the now the fastest growing discipline at all degree granting levels of any engineering discipline - and the current rapid growth pace is expected to continue.

Here's a link to a great feature article describing the reasons behind the growth, the challenges that educators face while trying to pack concepts from biology, physiology, physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and more into a typical 4-year undergraduate degree program, and how they are adapting to improve the curriculum.

Of course, National Instruments' products and LabVIEW in particular are playing an important role in the dealing with some of these challenges by making it possible to teach measurement and instrumentation concepts, circuits, signal processing, control, and even physiology (with the optional Vernier BioSensor Kit for ELVIS) - all with the same hardware and software platforms.  Critically, these same tools can take the student from the lab to a more open-ended design project, allowing him/her to actually "do engineering".  This is why we all studied to become engineers in the first place, right?

[rpursley8]

I work at National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a small engineering group.  We generally do not hire biomedical engineering students because they are usually weaker in engineering than electrical/mechanical/computer engineering students.  The biology/chemistry background of the biomedical engineering students does not really help them do the engineering tasks, but their lack of engineering classes is significant.  Even here at NIH, where you would think it might be useful, it really isn't.

[Steve.J]

Biomedical engineering is inherently multidisciplinary and educators have a major challenge trying to cover the range of concepts with the depth needed to graduate highly competent engineers in 4 years. More programs are forcing specialization earlier in the curriculum (devices, imaging, material/mechanics, etc.) to deal with this, but I'm of current opinion that more than four years is needed to cover everything both on the engineering side and the physiology/life-sciences. Many of us "practicing" biomedical engineers fell into it that way anyway - getting a undergraduate degree in electrical/mechanical etc. and then gaining the biosciences aspect in continuing coursework and real-life experience.