Published: 
By  kitter@virginia.edu

Application Deadline: November 15, 2018 Clinical Scholars Website Even at the Univeristy of Virginia, where the biomedical engineering department is located inside a major medical center - one of just a handful of co-located programs in the country - access to clinics and clinicians is limited. A host of healthcare realities are simply never seen by students and practicing engineers.BME Clinical Scholarsaims to bridge the gap. The goal is to immerse undergraduates in clinical settings, where they will work to identify unmet clinical needs and generate case studies for our BME classrooms. Each summer five BME Clinical Scholars work alongside third-year medical students in clinical rotations at the UVA Medical Center. Participants will receive one-on-one attention, will be exposed to multiple clinical environments, and will develop a mentoring relationship that extends well beyond the immersion program. The clinical problems that the BME Clinical Scholars and their medical student mentors jointly identify will be addressed by BME design teams during the regular academic year. These teams will, of course, be largely comprised of students who did not participate in the clinical immersion program - thus leveraging the experience of a few to impact all of BME! The Clincial Scholars will develop clinical case studies designed for engineering students and for use in specific core classes (e.g. Biotransport, Physiology, Computational BME). See for yourself how hospitals really work, observe clinicians in action, identify important and often overlooked clinical problems, bring your engineering expertise to bear, and find opportunities to educate your peers. Students will identify unmet clinical needs and generate clinically relevant problems and case studies to be explored for the department's courses, students, and faculty. BME Clinical Scholars is funded by an NIH R25 award (Dr. Will Guilford, PI). Details of the program, along with applications, are found on our web site.