Biomedical Engineering Program
The Department of Chemical Engineering at West Virginia University will offer an undergraduate certificate in biomedical engineering beginning in the fall semester of 2008.
The rationale for this new program is based on:
- The increased involvement of engineers, from a variety of disciplines, in the health care industry.
- The need to engineer increasingly sophisticated devices for the health care industry.
- The emergence of biology as an enabling science in a variety of engineering disciplines.
- The need to quantify and model the behavior of physiological systems.
In addition, the importance of biomedical engineering has been summarized by the U.S. Department of Labor, which predicts that employment of biomedical engineers is expected to increase faster than the average for all occupations through 2014.
Structure of the Certificate Program
The certificate program will be administered through the Department of Chemical Engineering but is open to all students with the appropriate prerequisites.
These are: basic biology (BIOL 115), mathematics through MATH 261 (differential equations), CHEM 115, CHEM 116 and a working knowledge of organic chemistry, specifically the naming conventions for and a knowledge of charge distribution in organic molecules.
Currently, the certificate program consists of the six required courses listed below. As courses are added, more elective courses will be available.
Core Courses (students must take all four):
1. Human Physiology - BIOL 235 (3 h)
2. Human Physiology: Quantitative Laboratory - BIOL 236 (1 h - lab)
3. Introduction to Biomedical Engineering - ChE 381 (3 h)
4. Biomaterials - ChE 382 (3 h)
Elective Courses (students may pick any 2):
5. Applied Molecular Modeling in Biology - ChE 481 (3 h)
6. Tissue Engineering - ChE 482 (3 h)
7. Other courses to be added when available; expected to include pharmacokinetics, physiologic modeling and control, and medical imaging.
For chemical engineering undergraduates, the certificate program can be completed with the addition of 1 additional credit hours (134 hours total). In addition, chemical engineering students with the biomedical certificate and four additional credit hours of organic chemistry (138 hours total) will satisfy all the prerequisites for medical school.
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