Recent News
Overview
The Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) within the UConn School of Dental Medicine uniquely spans three schools at UConn: School of Engineering, School of Dental Medicine and School of Medicine with overarching leadership by Associate Professor David Pierce (Department Head) and Professor Liisa Kuhn, Ph.D. (Associate Head). The BME Department as a whole has 33 faculty members between the Storrs and UConn Health campuses, with 8 core faculty members within the School of Dental Medicine. The BME Department was created within UConn Health to enhance the Dental School’s portfolio of clinically relevant research with high translational potential, to expand clinician-driven research opportunities through collaborative efforts with BME faculty, and to increase exposure of BME students to the clinical environment.
Academic Programs and Mission
The Biomedical Engineering Department seeks to provide students with the fundamental knowledge and skills needed to excel in the integration of science, engineering, and medicine to improve the quality of life and to become leaders in biomedical engineering. The Department of Biomedical Engineering offers degree programs leading to a Master of Science (M.S.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees. Ph.D. students under the supervision of biomedical engineering faculty may be enrolled in either the Biomedical Sciences graduate program administered through UConn Health or the Biomedical Engineering graduate program administered through UConn Storrs which also offers M.S. degrees. BME faculty are members of two different Biomedical Sciences areas of concentration: Skeletal Biology and Regeneration and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry.
Upon entering the Ph.D. or M.S. program in Biomedical Engineering, students are required to select their area of study or “track” in one of the following specialties: Biomaterials, Biomechanics, Bioinstrumentation, Biomedical Imaging, Biomedical Signal Processing and Biosensors, Bioinformatics and Systems Genomics, and Neuroengineering. In addition to mentoring Ph.D. and M.S. students, UConn Health faculty are course instructors for a variety of BME undergraduate and graduate courses and serve as mentors for BME undergraduate design teams and provide summer research opportunities to students from a wide range of programs on both campuses.