Biomedical Engineering

What you'll do in college

BME blends engineering with biology and medicine. You'll take core engineering courses (math, mechanics, signals, electronics) plus anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and cell biology. Specializations include medical imaging, prosthetics, biomaterials, drug delivery, tissue engineering, and neural interfaces.

Labs often involve designing devices that interact with living tissue or analyzing real medical data. Many programs encourage research with a faculty member or an internship at a medical device company or hospital.

What you'll do after college

Grads work at medical device companies (Medtronic, Boston Scientific), pharma, hospitals, research labs, and biotech startups, designing things like heart valves, MRI scanners, prosthetic limbs, and surgical robots. The work is heavily regulated and slow-moving compared to software—patient safety comes first—but extremely meaningful.

Many BME grads also use the major as a strong pre-med pathway, going on to medical school. Others pursue PhDs because cutting-edge biomedical research demands deep expertise.

Famous graduates

• Sangeeta Bhatia — MIT professor and biotech entrepreneur; B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University
• Reshma Kewalramani — CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals; B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University
• Tejal Desai — Bioengineer and Dean of Engineering at Brown; B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University

Selectivity vs. earnings