You can't schmooze with the best until you know who the best are.

October 23, 2006 6:35 PM

Biomedical engineering grad school questions: Where are the top biomedical engineering graduate programs, especially in biomechanics? And, perhaps more importantly, where is the groundbreaking work being done? Who are the "big fish" in the field?

I am set to graduate in the spring from a smaller liberal arts college and plan to enter a PhD grad program in biomechanics next fall. My school has no engineering department and nobody doing any work in biomechanics (my interest) and thus I have nobody local to ask for advice. I have been looking at programs' websites, but every program claims to be the best and I'm not sure how to discern which programs are actually better (beyond identifying schools based on general reputation). I am interested to find out where the "important" work is being done, so I am seeking the opinions of the hive mind about where the strongest grad programs are and who is doing the work. I have seen the U.S. News and World Report grad school rankings and did not find them particularly enlightening because they lack specificity. There are hundreds of people doing work in this field from all over the world...how am I ever going to figure out where to go?

posted by wondercow to Education (11 answers total)

I don't know anything about biomechanics, but the simple answer about "where to go" is that you find 50 good papers, make a list of what departments the PIs on those papers are in, and then just pull up the websites of those departments. You can go from there by reading the summaries of what work is being done in those departments. When you find a department with several interesting projects going on, apply there.
posted by rxrfrx at 6:49 PM on October 23, 2006

Johns Hopkins is one of the foremost bioengineering schools. It's also about three blocks from my house.
posted by electroboy at 6:53 PM on October 23, 2006

I'll give you a small list of schools. From there, you can research departments and profs to your hearts content. rxrfrx has a great suggestion. Also, beg borrow and steel some biomechanics textbooks, and look at what institutions the authors are currently teaching at.

Here are a few big-name places in biomedical engineering:
-University of Washington (the one in washington)
-University of California at San Diego (UCSD)
-University of Texas-Austin (UT, hook 'em longhorns)
posted by muddgirl at 7:11 PM on October 23, 2006

Rxrfrx is absolutely correct. Graduate school isn't a prize to be won, but a match to be made. The prestige of your advisor and department matter, sure, but your compatability (academic and, to some extent, personal) with them is much more important.

As inadequate as rankings like U.S. News are for colleges, they're almost absurd for graduate programs. "Best program" could mean a lot of things: availability of funding, student to faculty ratio, quality of lab equipment, etc. Really, the best program is the one where there are people who are working on areas that interest you and who are willing to mentor you. (Don't neglect the last part; many people-- including myself-- have placed prestige over the latter and have paid for it.)

If you're going to start work on the Ph.D. level, you should be familar enough with the literature to know whose work is similar to yours and who is frequently cited. You'll need to have at least some idea of these things to write your Statement of Intent.
posted by chickletworks at 7:40 PM on October 23, 2006

Your school may not have a bioengineering department, but you should see if anyone there has worked with someone who does bioengineering research, or has a friend or acquaintance who does bioengineering research. Start by asking your professors. Communicate with the contacts they provide, learn what they do and what they know, and ask each for more contacts.

At the same time, like others have said, learn the literature, learn what you want to do, and learn which PIs you want to work with. Match this against what you learn from people.

I'll reiterate the point that the rankings are useless. Picking graduate programs isn't like picking colleges; U.S. News-type rankings of graduate programs don't do anything but part non-graduate students from their money.
posted by halonine at 7:59 PM on October 23, 2006

I went to a small liberal arts college too (Oberlin). It was an incredible place, and going there was one of the best decisions I've ever made; nonetheless, you do lose out on the breadth of programs that can be offered at a larger university. But most small colleges recognize this, and do their best to deal with it. As an example, Oberlin didn't have a pre-med program, but a lot of kids want to go to med school, so there are clubs and councilors who make the whole med-school admissions process their focus. Biomedical engineering is close enough to medical school that you might check to see if your college has anything like this.

If that doesn't lead you anywhere, I'd recommend you look through all the relevant departments at your school, and approach the researcher who's interests are closest to biomedical engineering with this question. Most professors will be totally geeked out to hear that you're interested in grad school (even if in a field different than theirs) and will be happy to do their best to send you in the right direction.

Good luck with the search.
posted by HighTechUnderpants at 8:10 PM on October 23, 2006

Oh! I can't believe I forgot: anyone even contemplating graduate school should read-- nay, internalize-- Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or Ph.D. by Robert Peters. It's slightly dated, but it's the most sophisticated graduate school advice book I've seen (and I've read them all).
posted by chickletworks at 8:21 PM on October 23, 2006

Rice University has a really good program in BioE.
posted by chrisamiller at 8:40 PM on October 23, 2006

Oh, if you care for those sorts of rankings that chickletworks described, you can go to phds.org and create your own custom PhD-program-ranking by selecting what you find important (e.g. short average time to graduation, high number of faculty citations).
posted by rxrfrx at 6:54 AM on October 24, 2006

I'm an undergraduate studying biomedical engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. I'd like to second the recommendation for UW. As far as up and coming, Bionovo is doing a lot of cool stuff and collaborates with the University of California at San Francisco; University of California at Berkeley; University of California at Davis; University of Texas, Southwestern; and University of Colorado Health Sciences College. They're based in CA; Stanford is another good option. A lot of the groundbreaking work is in bionanotechnology, especially in brain research/diagnostics and the return of cognition. You can read some good papers at the Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology. Good luck!
posted by Maia at 7:47 AM on October 24, 2006

And if you are interested in going abroad - the University of New South Wales has a good Masters/PhD biomechanics program. But I'm somewhat biased as I went there.
posted by langeNU at 10:34 AM on October 24, 2006