I. Early Phase

II. Transition

The program was renamed Biomedical & Health Engineering in 1992.  In 1998, Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon, then beginning his second year in office, chartered a Strategic Planning Committee to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the university and to develop an action plan to carry the university into the 21st Century.  Biotechnology and health policy was identified as one of the areas for special consideration and investment.  A Task Force then developed action items that included: establishing a new department and an additional major program for undergraduate engineers, hiring new faculty members whose main research interests were biologically or medically oriented, maintaining a focus on quantitative modeling and experimentation, developing research and education thrusts in such areas as medical robotics, assisted living, tissue and organ engineering, and protein engineering, providing seed funds to establish collaborative research between engineers and scientists.  In 1999, a unique undergraduate additional major program was devised by a faculty committee led by Prof. Michael Domach and approved for engineering students.

III. Establishment and Growth of the Department

Until 2000, the Biomedical & Health Engineering Program and its predecessors largely functioned as an all-volunteer organization with enthusiastic faculty members.  Based on the institutional recognition of the rise of biomedical engineering as a distinct field, and the faculty and student demand, formal approval for the founding of a new Biomedical Engineering Department was sought during the Fall of 2001.   On July 1, 2002, the Biomedical Engineering Department was formally established.  The undergraduate Biomedical Engineering program began formally enrolling students in partnership with the traditional engineering departments starting with the Class of 2003, although the first enterprising Biomedical Engineering additional major graduated as early as May 2001.  The establishment of the Department was soon followed by a reorganization and consolidation of research areas.  The Bone Tissue Engineering Center was transferred from CIT to the Department and a new Center for Bioimage Informatics (CBI) was established to develop the unique strengths in bioimaging.  The founding Head of Biomedical Engineering, Prof. Todd Przybycien, led an impressive growth in student body and faculty.  By the end of the 2007 academic year, Biomedical Engineering core faculty had grown to 8.5 full-time equivalent; the number of Ph.D. students had increased from fewer than 5 in 2002 to 35, and the number of Biomedical Engineering majors had grown from around 70 to 130.

In Fall 2008, Yu-li Wang, an internationally known expert in cellular biomechanics, was recruited from the University of Massachusetts Medical School as the new Head of Biomedical Engineering.  With expertise encompassing basic science and engineering, he has set the new goal of building a model department that fully leverages the collaborative culture and research across CMU, and he has orchestrated a coordinated effort of aggressive growth and transformation to turn the Department into a leader in biomedical engineering research and education. 

(Updated 07/11/2011)