Coordinator
| Mhanna, Rami (Biomedical Engineering, MSFEA) |
| Co-coordinator | Rahal, Elias (Experimental Pathology, Immunology and Microbiology, FM)
|
| Coordinating Committee Members | Amatoury, Jason (Biomedical Engineering, MSFEA)
Daou, Arij (Biomedical Engineering, MSFEA)
Darwiche, Nadine (Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, FM)
El Hajj, Albert (Surgery, FM)
Khraiche, Massoud (Biomedical Engineering, MSFEA)
Refaat, Marwan (Internal Medicine, FM)
Saad, Walid (Chemical Engineering, MSFEA)
Zouein, Fouad (Pharmacology and Toxicology, FM)
|
Background
The Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program (BMEP) is a joint MSFEA and FM interdisciplinary program that offers two degrees: master of science (MS) in biomedical engineering and doctor of philosophy (PhD) in biomedical engineering. The BMEP is housed in the MSFEA and administered by both MSFEA and FM via a joint program coordinating committee (JPCC).
The mission of the BMEP is to provide excellent education and promote innovative research enabling students to apply knowledge and approaches from the biomedical and clinical sciences in conjunction with design and quantitative principles, methods, and tools from the engineering disciplines to address human health related challenges of high relevance to Lebanon, the Middle East and beyond. The program prepares its students to be leaders in their chosen areas of specialization committed to lifelong learning, critical thinking, and intellectual integrity.
The curricula of the MS and PhD degrees are composed of core and elective courses balanced between biomedical sciences and engineering and between fundamental and applied knowledge.
The curricula include the following three research focus areas:
- Biomedical Systems: This focus area includes research directions such as devices, instrumentation, biomechanics, biomaterials, drug delivery systems and tissue engineering.
- Biomedical Cybernetics: This focus area includes research directions such as biomedical and health informatics, computational biology, biomedical signal/image processing and biomedical systems engineering.
- Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Engineering: This focus area includes research directions such as fluid mechanics, modeling, simulation, imaging, devices, and implants related to both human cardiovascular and pulmonary systems.
Students may select their courses to satisfy the requirements of one of the three focus areas.
The MS and PhD degrees are open to students holding degrees from relevant fields of study including basic sciences, biomedical sciences, computer science, engineering, health sciences, and mathematics. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the program, eight remedial undergraduate courses in sciences, math and engineering have been identified to cover the needed prerequisite knowledge; the remedial courses required by each admitted students are customized on a case-by-case basis depending on the students’ undergraduate degree. Remedial undergraduate courses do not count as credit towards the MS or PhD degree completion. Grades on these remedial courses will appear on the transcript as Pass/Fail with a passing grade of C+.
Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering
The BMEP offers a master of science (MS) degree in biomedical engineering with two options: thesis option and non-thesis option.
Admission Requirements
The application procedures and admission requirements to the MS program follow AUB’s General University Academic Information section in the graduate catalogue. To be considered for admission, applicants must hold a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field of study from AUB or its equivalent, or from a recognized institution of higher learning.
Accepted students in the thesis option are eligible to apply to the Graduate Fellowship and Assistantship Program (GFAP). GFAP support cannot be used to cover the tuition for remedial undergraduate courses.
Course Requirements
The MS program consists of 30 credits. The curriculum design is divided into core courses and elective courses in addition to a master’s thesis for the thesis option. This program does not provide credit towards New York State licensure.
Core graduate courses: 18 credits of core courses from biomedical sciences and engineering.
Required core courses (18 cr.)
|
Credits |
| BIOC 321 | Nucleic Acids and Basic Genetics | 1
|
| BIOC 322 | Protein Biochemistry | 1
|
| BMEN 600 | Biomedical Engineering Applications | 3
|
| BMEN 601 | Computational Modeling of Physiological Systems | 3
|
| BMEN 672 | Hospital Lab Rotation | 0
|
| BMEN 673L | Biomedical Engineering Lab | 1
|
| EPHD 310 | Basic Biostatistics | 3
|
HUMR 310
(A, B, or C) | Biomedical Research Techniques
| 1
|
| HUMR 314 | Research Seminar | 1
|
| PHYL 346 | Human Physiology | 4
|
Restricted elective graduate courses: 6 credits restricted elective courses customized per focus area and required by both thesis and non-thesis options.
Restricted Elective Courses (6 cr.)
|
Credits |
Systems |
Cybernetics |
Cardiovascular |
BIOC 303
| Molecular Biology of Cancer | 3
| X
|
|
|
| BIOC 325 | Receptors and Signal Transduction | 2 | | X | |
| BIOC 326A | Bioinformatics Tools and Applications in Genomics | 1 | | X | |
| BMEN 603 | Tissue Engineering | 3 | X | | X |
| BMEN 604 | Engineering of Drug Delivery Systems | 3 | X | | X |
| BMEN 605 | Biomedical Imaging | 3 | | X | X |
| BMEN 606 | Nanobiosensors | 3 | X | X | |
| BMEN 607 | Biomechanics | 3 | X | | |
| BMEN 608 | Biomaterials and Medical Devices | 3 | X | | X |
| BMEN 609 | Computational Neuroscience | 3 | X | X | |
| BMEN 610 | Micro and Nano Neural Interfaces | 3 | X | | |
| BMEN 611 | Computational Modeling
in Biomechanics | 3 | X | X | X |
| EECE 601 or EECE 602 | Biomedical Engineering I or Biomedical Engineering II | 3 | X | X | X |
| EECE 603 | Biomedical Signal and
Image Processing | 3 | | X | X |
| EECE 605 | Neuromuscular Engineering | 3 | X | X | |
| EECE 633 or EECE 663 or EECE 667 or EECE 690 or EECE 693 | Data Mining or System Identification or Pattern Recognition or Introduction to Machine Learning Neural Networks
| 3 | | X |
|
| HUMR 305 | Cell and Tissue Biology | 3 | X | | |
| PHYL 302 | Cardiovascular Physiology | 2 | | | R |
| PHYL 300A | Pulmonary Physiology | 1 | | | X |
Free elective graduate courses for the non-thesis option: 6 credits additional elective courses. These courses should be taken from engineering and should be approved by the students’ adviser and the coordinator of the joint program coordinating committee.
Master thesis for the thesis option: 6 credits master’s thesis in biomedical engineering. The thesis requirements follow AUB’s General University Academic Information section in the graduate catalogue.
PhD in Biomedical Engineering
Admission Requirements
The application procedures and admission requirements to the PhD program follow AUB’s General University Academic Information section in the graduate catalogue. To be considered for admission, applicants must hold a bachelor’s or master’s degree in a relevant field of study from AUB or its equivalent, or from a recognized institution of higher learning.
Acceptance into the PhD program is determined by academic performance as well as an assessment of readiness, potential and ability to develop into independent researchers as judged by interviews by faculty members, a written statement, letters of recommendation, GRE scores, and other means of assessment such as publications and industrial experience.
Accepted students are eligible to receive scholarships that fully cover their tuition fees and provide a monthly stipend.
Degree Requirements
General requirements for master’s degree holders: Based on AUB’s guidelines, a minimum of 48 credit hours beyond those required for the master’s degree, of which a minimum of 18 credit hours must be in graduate level course work and a minimum of 24 credit hours of thesis work, must be taken. Requirements also allow a maximum of 3 credit hours out of the 18 credits of coursework as tutorial course and include a 0-credit comprehensive examination preparation course and a 0-credit thesis proposal preparation course.
General requirements for bachelor’s degree holders: Based on AUB’s guidelines, a minimum of 78 credit hours beyond those required for the bachelor’s degree, of which a minimum of 36 credit hours must be in graduate level coursework and a minimum of 30 credit hours of thesis work, must be taken. Requirements also allow a maximum of 6 credit hours out of the 36 credits of coursework as tutorial courses and include a 0-credit comprehensive examination preparation course and a 0-credit thesis proposal preparation course.
To earn a PhD degree in biomedical engineering, the students must complete the following requirements:
- Satisfy the course and research credit requirements.
- Satisfy the residency requirement and all other pertinent AUB regulations.
- Have at least one international refereed journal article based on the PhD thesis.
- Have at least one refereed conference paper based on the PhD thesis.
- Have a cumulative GPA of 3.7 or above.
- Pass the comprehensive and oral qualifying examinations.
- Successfully defend the PhD thesis.
The following are the graduate level course requirements for students admitted with a bachelor’s degree. The total number of credits is at least 36 credits divided among core, restricted elective, and free elective courses. Students admitted with a master’s degree can waive as many courses as possible without going below the minimum required 18 credits of coursework.
Core graduate courses: 21 credits of core courses from biomedical sciences and engineering.
Students are required to take two PhD lab rotation courses where each lab rotation is 1 credit (one lab rotation in MSFEA and one lab rotation in FM).
EPHD 310 can be replaced by another advanced level statistics course based on JPCC’s approval.
Required core courses (21 cr.)
|
Credits |
| BIOC 321 | Nucleic Acids and Basic Genetics | 1 |
| BIOC 322 | Protein Biochemistry | 1
|
| BIOM 385 | Research Ethics | 1
|
| BMEN 600 | Biomedical Engineering Applications | 3
|
| BMEN 601 | Computational Modeling of Physiological Systems | 3
|
| BMEN 671 | PhD Lab Rotation | 1 + 1 |
| BMEN 672 | Hospital Lab Rotation | 0
|
| BMEN 673L | Biomedical Engineering Lab | 1
|
| BMEN 675 | Approved Experience | 0
|
| EPHD 310 | Basic Biostatistics | 3
|
HUMR 310
(A, B, or C) | Biomedical Research Techniques
| 1
|
| HUMR 314 | Research Seminar | 1
|
| PHYL 346 | Human Physiology | 4
|
Restricted elective graduate courses: 9 credits restricted elective courses customized per focus area.
Courses marked as “R” are required, and courses marked as “X” are possible elective options.
Restricted Elective Courses (6 cr.)
| Credits | Systems | Cybernetics | Cardiovascular |
| BIOC 303 | Molecular Biology of Cancer | 3 | X | | |
| BIOC 325 | Receptors and Signal Transduction | 2 | | R | |
| BIOC 326A | Bioinformatics Tools and Applications in Genomics | 1 | | X | |
| BMEN 603 | Tissue Engineering | 3 | X | | X |
| BMEN 604 | Engineering of Drug Delivery Systems | 3 | X | | X |
| BMEN 605 | Biomedical Imaging | 3 | | X | X |
| BMEN 606 | Nanobiosensors | 3 | X | X | |
| BMEN 607 | Biomechanics | 3 | X | | |
| BMEN 608 | Biomaterials and Medical Devices | 3 | X | | X |
| BMEN 609 | Computational Neuroscience | 3 | X | X | |
| BMEN 610 | Micro and Nano Neural Interfaces | 3 | X | | |
| BMEN 611 | Computational Modeling in Biomechanics | 3 | X | X | X |
| EECE 601 or EECE 602 | Biomedical Engineering I or Biomedical Engineering II | 3 | X | X | X |
| EECE 603 | Biomedical Signal and Image Processing | 3 | | X | X |
| EECE 605 | Neuromuscular Engineering | 3 | X | X | |
| EECE 633 or EECE 663 or EECE 667 or EECE 690 or EECE 693 | Data Mining or System Identification or Pattern Recognition or Introduction to Machine Learning Neural Networks
| 3 | | X | |
| HUMR 305 | Cell and Tissue Biology | 3 | R | | |
| PHYL 300A | Pulmonary Physiology | 1 | | | R |
| PHYL 302 | Cardiovascular Physiology | 2 | | | X |
Free elective graduate courses: 6 credits additional elective courses. These courses should be taken based on the students’ specific area of research as approved by their adviser.
Course Descriptions