Undergraduate Courses
BME 2000 Biomedical Engineering Design and Discovery
Prerequisite: None
Provides students with the skills necessary to engage in meaningful engineering design, and focuses on the latter stages of the engineering design process - detailed design, prototyping, and evaluation. Students develop skills in computer assisted design, embedded controls, prototyping, analysis and teamwork. A major focus of the class is the execution of a design project. Major or Minor in Biomedical Engineering or Instructor Permission.
BME 2101 Physiology I for Engineers
Prerequisite: CHEM 1610 and PHYS 1425; or instructor permission. Co-requisite: PHYS 2415 or ECE 2502
You will learn how excitable tissue, nerves and muscle, and the cardiovascular and respiratory systems function. You will develop an understanding of mechanisms, with an introduction to structure, an emphasis on quantitative analysis, and integration of hormonal and neural regulation and control.
BME 2102 Physiology II
Prerequisite: CHEM 1610, PHYS 1425, and BME 2101; or instructor permission
Introduces the physiology of the kidney, salt and water balance, gastrointestinal system, endocrine system, and central nervous system, with reference to diseases and their pathophysiology.
BME 2104 Cell and Molecular Biology for Engineers
Prerequisite: CHEM 1610 or instructor permission.
Introduces the fundamentals of cell structure and function, emphasizing the techniques and technologies available for the study of cell biology. A problem-based approach is used to motivate each topic. Divided into three general sections: cell structure and function includes cell chemistry, organelles, enzymes, membranes, membrane transport, intracellular compartments and adhesion structures; energy flow in cells concentrates on the pathways of glycolysis and aerobic respiration; information flow in cells focuses on modern molecular biology and genetic engineering, and includes DNA replication, the cell cycle, gene expression, gene regulation, and protein synthesis. Also presents specific cell functions, including movement, the cytoskeleton and signal transduction.
BME 2220 Biomechanics
Prerequisite: APMA 2120 or MATH 2310, PHYS 1425. Co-requisite: APMA 2130 or MATH 3250, or instructor permission
Introduces principles of continuum mechanics of biological tissues and systems. Topics 1) Review selected results used in the biomechanics field, 2) properties of living tissue; 3) mechanical basis and effects of pathology & trauma: 4) intro to mechanotransduction, circulatory transport, growth and remodeling and tissue-engineered materials; 5) low Reynolds number flows in vivo and in microsystems.
BME 2315 Computational Biomedical Engineering
Prerequisite: CS 1110/1111/1112. Co-requisite: APMA 2120 or MATH 2310, or instructor permission
Introduces techniques for constructing predictive or analytical engineering models for biological processes. Teaches modeling approaches using example problems in transport, mechanics, bioelectricity, molecular dynamics, tissue assembly & imaging. Problem sets include 1) linear systems and filtering 2) compartmental modeling 3) numerical techniques 4) finite element / finite difference models and 5) computational automata models.
BME 3030 Design and Innovation in Medicine
Prerequisite: BME 2000 or instructor permission
Project-driven course focusing on biomedical product design with emphasis on marketability, innovation, entrepreneurship and business. Topics include design fundamentals, problem/needs identification, delineation of realistic constraints and product specifications, intellectual property, market analysis, entrepreneurship, specific advanced design, business plan development, venture funding, and medical product testing methods.
BME 3040 - Regulation & Design of Biomedical Products
Prerequisite: BME 2000 and BME 2101.
The focus for the course will be establishing a regulatory mindset for students to engage with the Food & Drug Administration, primarily the Center for Medical Devices and Radiological Health. The material covered throughout the semester is presented in a series of lectures, design prompts, exercises, workshops, and reviews. Students will develop their own project(s) and work as individuals and in small groups/teams.
BME 3080 Biomedical Engineering Integrated Design and Experimental Analysis (IDEAS) Laboratory I
Prerequisite: 3rd Year standing in Biomedical Engineering major
A year-long course integrating concepts and skills from prior courses to formulate and solve problems in biomedical systems, including experimental design, performance and analysis. Testing in tissues/cells & manipulation of molecular constituents to determine structural and functional characteristics for design of therapeutic or measurement systems. Methods incl biochemical, physiological, cell biology, mechanical, electrical and computer, systems, chemical, imaging, and other approaches.
BME 3090 Biomedical Engineering Integrated Design and Experimental Analysis (IDEAS) Laboratory II
Prerequisite: BME 3080 and 3rd Year standing in Biomedical Engineering major
Second part of a year-long course integrating concepts and skills from prior courses to formulate and solve problems in biomedical systems, including experimental design, performance and analysis.
BME 3240 Biotransport
Prerequisite: APMA 2130 or MATH 3250, BME 2101, BME 2104, or instructor permission
Biotransport in biological living systems is a fundamental phenomenon important in all aspects of the life cycle. Course will introduce principles and application of fluid and mass transport processes in cell, tissue and organ systems. Topics include introduction to physiological fluid mechanics in the circulation and tissue, fundamentals of mass transport in biological systems, effects of mass transport and biochemical interactions at the cell and tissue scales, and fluid and mass transport in organs.
BME 3310 Biomedical Systems Analysis and Design
Prerequisite: APMA 2130 or MATH 3250, CS 1110, and PHYS 1425 or instructor permission
Presents the analytical tools used to model signals and linear systems. BME examples include multicompartment modeling of drug delivery, modeling of dynamic biomechanical systems and electrical circuit models of excitable cells. Topics: terminology for signals and systems, convolution, continuous time Fourier transforms, electrical circuits with applications to bioinstrumentation and biosystems modeling and applications of linear system theory.
BME 3636 Neural Network Models of Cognition and Brain Computation
Prerequisite: 3rd or 4th year standing, or instructor permission
An introductory course to neural networks research, specifically biologically-based networks that reproduce cognitive phenomena. The goal of this course is to teach the basic thinking and methodologies used in constructing and understanding neural-like networks. Cross-listed as NESC 5330.
BME 4063 Biomedical Engineering Capstone Design I
Prerequisite: 4th year standing in the Biomedical Engineering major or instructor permission
A year-long design project required for BME majors. Students select, formulate, and solve a design problem related to a device or a system. Projects use conceptual design, skills obtained in the integrated lab and substantial literature and patent reviews. Projects are sponsored by faculty, physicians and/or companies. Students may work on their own with outside team members when appropriate or with other students in integrative teams.
BME 4064 Biomedical Engineering Capstone Design II
Prerequisite: 4th year standing in the Biomedical Engineering major or instructor permission
Second half of a year-long design project required for BME majors. Students select, formulate, and solve a design problem related to a device or a system. Projects use conceptual design, skills obtained in the integrated lab and substantial literature and patent reviews. Projects are sponsored by faculty, physicians and/or companies. Students may work on their own with outside team members when appropriate or with other students in integrative teams.
BME 4280 Motion Biomechanics
Prerequisite: BME 2101, BME 2220, or instructor permission
Focuses on the study of forces (and their effects) that act on the musculoskeletal structures of the human body. Based on the foundations of functional anatomy and engineering mechanics (rigid body and deformable approaches); students are exposed to clinical problems in orthopedics and rehabilitation.
BME 4290 Stem Cell Engineering
Requisites: Prerequisite: Must have taken BME 2104
How does a single fertilized egg grow and divide into every cell in the body, from branching neurons to beating cardiomyocytes and everything in between? Can we harness this knowledge to better understand disease, and to produce therapeutically relevant cell types, tissues, and organs? You will explore what controls stem cell differentiation using hands-on experiments, with emphasis on methods to engineer cell fate for regenerative medicine.
BME 4315 Systems Bioengineering
Prerequisites: APMA 2130 or MATH 3250, APMA 3100 (or MATH 3100) or APMA 3110; BME 2101, BME 2104, BME 2315
This course introduces techniques for constructing mathematical and computational models of biological processes and utilizing experimental data to validate those models at many levels of organizational scale -- from genome to whole-tissue.
BME 4350 Biomedical Engineering Data Science
Prerequisite: APMA 3100 (or MATH 3100) or APMA 3110, CS 1110
Introduces genomics and bioinformatics theory and tools to analyze large scale biological data. Specific topics covered are Introduction to Linux and R statistical programming language, computations on the high-performance computational cluster, analysis of sequencing data with applications in gene expression and protein/DNA interactions, differential expression analysis, pathway and co-expression network analysis.
BME 4360 Molecular Data Science
Prerequisites: Must have completed APMA 3100 or APMA 3110 or BME 2104 or BME 2315 AND CS 1110 or CS 1111 or CS 1112 or placed out of CS 1110 AND 3rd or 4th year standing
Intro to systems-level measurement techniques for capturing molecular information and the mathematical and computational methods for harnessing the information from these measurements to improve our understanding of cell physiology and disease. Practical implementation of the concepts in MATLAB or Python will be applied to existing, real data from published journal articles.
BME 4370 Quantitative Biological Reasoning
Prerequisite: Instructor permission required
This course will provide students with a quantitative framework for identifying and addressing important biological questions at the molecular, cell, and tissue levels. The course will focus on the interplay between methods and logic, with an emphasis on the themes that emerge repeatedly in quantitative experiments.
BME 4380 - Microbial Biomedical Engineering
Requisites: Prerequisites: BME 2000 AND (BME 2101 OR BME 2102) AND BME 2104 AND BME 2315
We will explore engineering methods to use “microbes as tools” for human wellbeing, to understand and combat “microbes as enemies” in infectious disease, and to characterize and manipulate “microbes as partners” in human health and wellbeing. We will learn how facets of BME are used to test hypotheses of human/microbe relationships and to design strategies to understand and treat disease and improve human wellbeing.
BME 4390 - Bioreaction Kinetics: Biomedical & Pharmacological Perspectives
Requisites: Must have taken BME 2104 and APMA 2130
We will learn to bridge the gap between the fields of bioengineering and the science of how drugs interact with biological systems, i.e., Pharmacology, including the principles of biochemical reaction kinetics and engineering; how such principles can help us describe, model, predict and modulate the outcome of biochemical reactions in cells and biological reactors, and apply these principles to the understanding of pharmacological phenomena.
BME 4414 Biomaterials
Prerequisite: BME 2101, BME 2104, or instructor permission
Introduces biomaterials science and biological interactions with materials with overview of biomaterials testing and characterization. Emphasis on emerging novel strategies and design of biomaterials. Areas of concentration: Use of polymers and ceramics in biomaterials, drug delivery applications, tissue engineering from orthopaedic and vascular perspectives and nanotechnology related to biomaterials. Attention to the in vitro and in vivo testing of biomaterials, and a review of current research in the field.
BME 4417 Tissue Engineering
Prerequisites: APMA 2130, BME 2101, BME 2104, or instructor permission
Introduces the fundamental principles of tissue engineering. Topics: tissue organization and dynamics, cell and tissue characterization, cell-matrix interactions, transport processes in engineered tissues, biomaterials and biological interfaces, stem cells and interacting cell fate processes and tissue engineering methods. Examples of approaches for regeneration of cartilage, bone, ligament, tendons, skin and liver are presented.
BME 4550 Special Topics in Biomedical Engineering
Prerequisite: third- or fourth-year standing and instructor permission
Applies engineering science, design methods, and system analysis to developing areas and current problems in biomedical engineering. Topics vary by semester. Recent topics include Medical Imaging Systems Theory, BME Advanced Design, BME Electronics Lab, and Systems Biology Modeling and Experimentation.
BME 4550 Special Topics: Mechanobiology
Prerequisite: BME 2101, BME 2104, and BME 2220
Why are tumors detectable as stiff lumps? Why do fatty plaques in arteries only occur at certain locations? How does cell sensing of mechanical forces determine what kind of cell it becomes? Questions such as these describe the growing field of mechanobiology. In this course, we will explore and analyze mechanisms in mechanobiology at length scales from centimeters (organs) to nanometers (molecules), we will investigate how cell and tissue structure regulate phenotype, and we will learn to develop and test hypotheses in cell and tissue engineering that relate to our research and career interests.
BME 4641 Bioelectricity
Prerequisites: BME 2101, BME 3310 or ECE 2630, or instructor permission
Studies the biophysical mechanisms governing production and transmission of bioelectric signals, measurement of these signals and their analysis in basic and clinical electrophysiology. Introduces the principles of design and operation of therapeutic medical devices used in the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Includes membrane potential, action potentials, channels and synaptic transmission, electrodes, electroencephalography, electromyography, electrocardiography, pacemakers, defibrillators, and neural assist devices.
BME 4783 Medical Imaging Modalities
Prerequisite: BME 2315, BME 3310, or instructor permission
An overview of modern medical imaging modalities with regard to the physical basis of image acquisition and methods of image reconstruction. Topics cover the basic engineering and physical principles underlying the major medical imaging modalities: x-ray [plain film, mammography, and computed tomography (CT)], nuclear medicine [positron-emission tomography (PET) and single-photo-emission computed tomography (SPECT)], ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
BME 4784 (on hold) Medical Image Analysis
Prerequisite: BME 3310, ECE 3750, or instructor permission
Introduces the fundamental principles of medical image analysis and visualization. Focuses on the processing and analysis of ultrasound, MR, and X-ray images for the purpose of quantitation and visualization to increase the usefulness of modern medical image data. Includes image perception and enhancement, 2-D Fourier transform, spatial filters, segmentation, and pattern recognition. A weekly lab develops skill in computer image analysis with the KHOROS system.
BME 4806 Biomedical Applications of Genetic Engineering
Prerequisite: BME 2101; Co-requisite: BME 2104, or instructor permission
Provides a grounding in molecular biology and a working knowledge of recombinant DNA technology, thus establishing a basis for the evaluation and application of genetic engineering in whole animal systems. Beginning with the basic principles of genetics, this course examines the use of molecular methods to study gene expression, deliver viral and non-viral vectors, and its critical role in health.
BME 4890 Nanomedicine
Prerequisite: BME 2102, BME 2315 or instructor permission, Recommended prerequisite: BME 2104 or BME 4414
Students will design treatment strategies for cancer and cardiovascular disease based on molecular bioengineering principles. Special topics will include design of nanoparticle drug and gene delivery platforms, materials biocompatibility, cancer immunotherapy, and molecular imaging.
BME 4993 Independent Study
Prerequisite: Instructor permission
In-depth study of a biomedical engineering area by an individual student in close collaboration with a departmental faculty member. Requires advanced analysis of a specialized topic in biomedical engineering that is not covered by current offerings. Requires faculty contact time and assignments comparable to regular course offerings. Requires approval by UG Program Director.
BME 4995 Biomedical Engineering Advanced Projects
Prerequisite: Instructor permission
A year-long research project in biomedical engineering conducted in consultation with a department faculty advisor; usually related to ongoing faculty research. Includes the design, execution, and analysis of experimental laboratory work and computational or theoretical computer analysis of a problem. Requires a comprehensive report of the results.
The information contained on this website is for informational purposes only. The Undergraduate Record and Graduate Record represent the official repository for academic program requirements. These publications may be found here.
Licensure Disclosure
- As a member of the State Authorizations Reciprocity Agreement, the University of Virginia (UVA) is authorized to provide curriculum in a distance learning environment to students located in all states in the United States except for California. (34 CFR 668.43(a)(6)& 34 CFR 668.72(n)).
- Upon completion of an engineering degree program which prepares graduates for licensure or certification, graduates may be eligible for initial professional licensure in another U.S. state by applying to the licensing board or agency in that state. Please visit the University’s state authorization web pages to make an informed decision regarding which states’ educational requirements for initial licensure are met by this program. (668.43(a)(5) (v)(A) - (C))
- Enrolled students who change their current (or mailing) address to a state other than Virginia should update this information immediately in the Student Information System as it may impact their ability to complete internship, practicum, or clinical hours, use Title IV funds, or meet licensure or certification requirements in the new state. (34 CFR 668.402).