The BioMEMS Bioengineering Summer Institute will involve each student in both a research experience and a selected set of courses appropriate to his/her needs. Both of these experiences are intended to whet a student’s appetite for further study of biomedical engineering (at the graduate level) and help them evaluate whether they would want to pursue a career in the field.

Research

The BioMEMS research experience is conceptually structured into three principal components:

1. Via experience in a host biomedical research laboratory, each student seeks to develop a thorough understanding of a biomedical problem that could be addressed by a BioMEMS device.
2. Learn how to design and construct a BioMEMS device that could tackle such a problem.
3. Test the performance of a BioMEMS device in its intended biomedical application.

By the end of the Summer Institute each group of students will have produced one silicon wafer with BioMEMS devices on it ready to be tested.

To construct their BioMEMS device, students will be trained to work with the staff of the microfabrication facility inside the Class-10 cleanroom at NJIT. Such a facility is not commonly available to students elsewhere. Hence, students in the BioMEMS Summer Institute will have a rather unique experience as part of their summer.

Students will be encouraged to return for a second summer in the BioMEMS Summer Institute. This will allow them to trace the development of a de novo BioMEMS device through both the design and fabrication stages. In a single summer experience, a student is unlikely to accomplish both goals for the same device, so in their first summer students will be designing one device and fabricating another.

Students will also be placed in a host biomedical research laboratory at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, NJIT, Rutgers (all in the University Heights community of Newark), or other labs within easy commute within the New York metropolitan area. Here, they will investigate a particular biomedical research question to which BioMEMS will be applied. Alternatively, students who are already working with a biomedical research laboratory at their home university may be able to link their BioMEMS project to that work.

Curriculum

A student’s research experience will be complemented by up to three formal courses. These will give students (1) a broader background in BioMEMS than their focused research project, (2) an understanding of basic biological processes, and also (3) a general introduction to the problems that biomedical engineers confront.

• Introduction to BioMEMS
• Biological and Chemical Foundations for Biomedical Engineers
  biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, physiology
• Fundamentals of Biomedical Engineering
  bioelectric signals, biosensors & instrumentation, bioimaging, biomechanics, biomaterials, tissue engineering