Welcome to
Biomedical Engineering

All BME students have an Advising Bar on their Spring 2021 registration. To clear this bar and register on time, please complete the required advising activity listed below, based on your planned graduation year. 

All Group Advising Sessions Will Be on Zoom. You do not have to sign up or RSVP, but please attend one that works for your schedule. 

Class of 2024 / Freshmen

Required: Attend one Class of 2024 Group Advising Session
Optional: BME Peer Advising & AEMB Peer Advising Drop-ins

Class of 2023 / Sophomores

Required: Attend one Class of 2023 Group Advising Session
Optional: BME Peer Advising & AEMB Peer Advising Drop-ins

Class of 2022 / Juniors

Required: Complete the Class of 2022 Advising Form
Optional: Attend or watch the Class of 2022 Group Advising Session

Class of 2021 / Seniors

Nothing is required, bars to be lifted for everyone
Optional: Review Chase's Senior Checklist

Need to talk to a BME student for more advice?

The BME Peer Advisors are trained by Margo & Chase and work in the BME Academic Advising Office. They run daily "Virtual Lobby" on Zoom and are available to help students with all kinds of questions, from getting internships and research experience to taking Physics and more!

"Senior Design was the most important snapshot of what I could do with my degree. Working with a team is key, which is the foundation for this course. Identifying who has what skills, how we could leverage different team members’ abilities, determining how to split a workload—we had a job to accomplish, and it felt like we were running a business." —Patrick Sullivan, B.S. 2014

Our undergraduate curriculum prepares students to think like engineers through hands-on, practical learning experiences. These opportunities culminate with capstone (or senior) design—a year-long course where students engineer and design product prototypes based on actual biomedical engineering problems, working under the guidance of faculty and industry mentors. The capstone design component of the undergraduate curriculum is consistently mentioned among alumni as one of the premiere factors that prepares them in their careers. We are now accepting project submissions for the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year. Please click here to submit a project idea and feel free to email our capstone design team with any questions or concerns.

Job opportunities are most commonly found in fields such as cellular, tissue, genetic, clinical, and rehabilitation engineering. Additionally, there are opportunities within the fields of bioinstrumentation, biomaterials, biomechanics, drug design and delivery, medical imaging, orthopedic surgery, pharmaceuticals and systems physiology.

As an undergraduate biomedical engineering major at The University of Texas at Austin, you will have the opportunity to learn about each area and discover the field you are most passionate about. Roughly one-third of graduates from the undergraduate biomedical engineering program go into industry, one-third go to medical school, and one-third go to graduate school or professional degree program in fields such as law, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine.

Biomedical engineering students have access to Career Services, which provide services and resources for students, including individual career advising, resume review, access to jobs, internships and employers participating in on-campus recruiting.

Recruiters and students also have access to HireTexas: AccessUT, a free online job search website at The University of Texas at Austin.

Advancing Our Quality of Life

Biomedical engineers use their engineering and science backgrounds to design the next generation of systems and treatments that will advance the quality of life for patients. They leave an impact through the creation of medical devices that detect and treat disease, the invention of materials that can be used to treat illness in the body, and by designing complex computer models to develop the next generation of disease-fighting drugs.

Biomedical engineers are responsible for the creation of artificial organs, automated patient monitoring, blood chemistry sensors, advanced therapeutic and surgical devices, application of expert systems and artificial intelligence to clinical decision making, design of optimal clinical laboratories, medical imaging systems, computer modeling of physiological systems, biomaterials design, and biomechanics for injury and wound healing, among many others.

Biomedical engineers respond to societal needs and provide solutions to engineer a healthier world.

All undergraduate students in the Department of Biomedical Engineering are required to have a laptop. Some courses may require that you bring your laptop to every class or lab.

It is the student’s responsibility to ensure that his or her laptop meets the following requirements. Many options are available to meet these requirements, and we strongly recommend you read all information on this page to ensure your laptop is compliant. Download a printable PDF of the requirements.

Hardware Requirements

Operating System Requirements

Students are required to install specific software packages on their laptops for certain classes. Where possible, the university and BME try to provide students with the opportunity to obtain Mac OS/X versions of required software packages. However, some of the software packages used in our program are only available on the Microsoft Windows Platform. Due to this need, all students are required to have Windows.

Mac OS/X and Linux

Students with Mac OS/X and/or Linux operating systems will need to obtain and install an additional copy of Windows for their system. BME recommends that students use virtualization environments that permit both operating systems to run simultaneously.

Virtualization Tools

Virtualization software operates two distinct computer environments on the same laptop. The original Mac OS/X still continues to be the primary operating system, while Windows can be installed and run as a guest operating system inside a "virtual machine." Bear in mind that the "host" computer is now running two operating systems simultaneously, which will reduce the processing capability of botht he host and the guest OS.

Two recommended options for **non M1 Macs** are:

• Virtual Box product from Oracle Corporation
• Parallels (the current version supports M1 ARM processors for Mac)

Students must have a Windows license in order to run Windows in a virtualization environment. Installation ISO's and 64-bit Windows licenses are available through ENGR Direct for free.

Minimum Software Requirements

Software used in classes, such as LabVIEW and Multisim, is provided to engineering students at no cost by the Cockrell School of Engineering. 

Encryption

It is highly recommended that your laptop be encrypted using your operating system’s native encryption utility (e.g. BitLocker, FileVault 2, etc.) The encryption method chosen may depend on the hardware and operating system supported by the encryption utility. Laptops are highly vulnerable assets that contain a huge amount of personal information that is easily accessible by thieves unless encryption is enabled.

Financial Aid

Students receiving financial aid should contact the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid to have their aid adjusted to include the cost of a laptop. 

Biomedical Engineering students are strongly encouraged to seek out internships at medical device or biotechnology companies. We encourage students to seek out opportunities at small, medium, and large companies. UT Austin BME has graduates in engineering positions most or all of the major companies listed below, and many more:

• Accenture
• Boston Scientific
• DJO Surgical
• Epic
• Fitbit
• GE Healthcare
• Genetech
• Hospira
• Johnson & Johnson
• Medtronic 
• Merck
• National Instruments
• OsteoMed
• Pfizer
• Proctor & Gamble
• Siemens
• Smith & Nephew
• Smiths Medical
• St. Jude Medical
• Stryker
• Zimmer

Career Assistance and Networking

The department sponsors a workshop each semester for students on how to search for a BME internship and job. We maintain an online alumni network to allow students to contact graduates from our program at companies and inquire about internship opportunities. The Cockrell School of Engineering offers services and resources to current engineering students and recent graduates in the Engineering Career Assistance Center.

The bachelor of science in biomedical engineering (BSBME) is an undergraduate degree that integrates engineering tools with biological sciences. Graduates from this degree become engineers who have the foundational training to develop solutions to the most complex problems we face in medicine.

Interdisciplinary Training

The best solutions to medical problems are produced by teams with diverse technical perspectives. Biomedical engineering is an interdisciplinary field that takes aspects of chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineering and combines them with human physiology to solve problems in health care. We offer a foundational interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum covering engineering and science fundamentals, biomaterials, physiology, instrumentation, biomechanics, engineering design, and more. 

Students take an engineering design lab from Year 1 to 4 to apply what they are learning in classes in a hands-on environment. The BME building has three design labs just for BME students. Students also also have access to the 23,000-square-foot National Instruments Student Project Center.

The program also provides students the opportunity to take electives in one of four academic tracks:

• Track 1: Biomedical Imaging and Instrumentation
• Track 2: Cellular and Biomolecular Engineering
• Track 3: Computational Biomedical Engineering
• Track 4: Molecular, Cellular and Tissue Biomechanics

The Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering requires 133 semester credit hours (SCH) for completion. Many students can claim credit by exam for some BSBME degree requirements through college credit for AP and entrance exam scores.