National University of Singapore (NUS): Engineering: Bioengineering
Category Bioengineering, Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, UndergraduateTags Bioengineering, Engineering, National University of Singapore, NUS
In the early 1980s, the Faculties of Medicine and Engineering saw the need to bring together the interdisciplinary biomedical engineering activity. Courses were set up and intense research activity was developed in areas including orthopedic surgery, medical informatics, medical imaging, biomaterials and medical instrumentation. This research led foundations to spin-of companies, amongst them Osteo-Med (bone implants), KentRidge Instruments (Kri, biomedical instrumentation), and Medi_Informatics (medical imaging). Fructuous collaborations were established contacts with leading universities such as the Johns Hopkins University. The Biomedical Engineering activity is coordinated by the Interdisciplinary Consultative Group (ICG) in Biomedical Engineering, who is also organizing the well known International Conference on Biomedical Engineering (ICBME) held every second year in Singapore
Bioengineering has now become a strategic area of development in Singapore. The Faculty of Engineering of the NUS has launched a Bioengineering Division to provide Bioengineering Education and further advance the development of the biomedical sciences in Singapore. It is collaborating with the Faculties of Medicine, Science, Dentistry and the School of Computing of the NUS as well as the National University Hospital and national research institutes such as the Johns Hopkins Singapore, Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Kent Ridge Digital Laboratory and Institute of High Performance of Computing, all located within the university campus and close to the Science Park.
The Bioengineering Division was formed in late 2001 as a result of a Faculty of Engineering initiative that involved major Faculties and Research Institutes in the University. Although the Division is a University Department within the Faculty of Engineering, we retain the name Division to emphasize on our horizontal structure and to signify our commitment to multidisciplinary approach to research and education.
The Division has academic staff under joint appointments from Mechanical Engineering, Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Orthopaedic Department, and Research Institutes-IMRE and DMRI. Policy decisions are made in the Division Board, which consists of academic staffs from the Faculties of Engineering, Science and Medicine. The Division is the academic home of the undergraduate major and minor programmes in Bioengineering.
Our research focuses on the following core expertise: Biomaterials, Biomechanics, Nano/Micro mechanics, Biosignal processing, with application in areas of Tissue Engineering, Biopharmaceutical engineering, Biomedical Imaging, Biosensors and Instrumentation and Medical Devices.
The Graduate Programme in Bioengineering is a multidisciplinary body run by a Management Committee consists of appointed members from Faculties of Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry and Research Institutes. Its administrative support is provided by the Faculty of Medicine. Thus our Bioengineering graduate students will be fully exposed to clinical practices at the Faculty of Medicine and the National University Hospital.
Bioengineering is a discipline in which the principles and tools of traditional engineering disciplines are applied to the analysis and solution of problems in biology and medicine. It differs from other branches of engineering in that there is no particular subject matter or set of techniques that belong exclusively to bioengineering. A bioengineering education aims to train engineers who can analyse multifold problems from an engineering, biological and medical perspective. They should be able to anticipate the special difficulties in working with living systems and evaluate a wider range of possible approaches to solutions.
The bioengineering curriculum teaches fundamental concepts and approaches adapted from electrical, mechanical, chemical and materials engineering syllabi, which need to be applied to studying and unravelling biomedical problems. Not only does the study of bioengineering provide a solid foundation in sciences and engineering, it develops powerful methods for understanding basic physiological processes such as fluid transport (for example, blood and mucus transport), feedback control (for example, the control of blood pressure), and cell attachment, differentiation and proliferation. Furthermore, bioengineering also helps in understanding the principles underlying biomedical instruments (for example, ECG machine, computer tomography), orthopaedic implants (for example, hip and knee joints) and prosthetic devices.
Today, we live in an exciting era where advances in biomedical sciences will transform the world. There is a fast-growing demand for graduates well-trained in bioengineering. The Division’s educational and research programmes play a key role in developing bioengineers who will meet the needs of the biomedical sciences industry, the economy’s new engine of growth.
To facilitate research in bioengineering, the Division has set up a Bioengineering and Nanobioengineering Corridor using a multi-disciplinary joint-laboratory concept. It comprises the following laboratories:
- Biofluids
- Bioimaging
- Biomechanics
- Biophysics
- Biosignal Processing & Instrumentation
- Chemotherapeutic Engineering
- Computational Bioengineering
- NanoBioanalytics
- Nanobiotechnology
- Nano Biomechanics
- Tissue Engineering
- Tissue Repair
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