Or what not to choose to do as an undergraduate major.
Disclaimer: Most of the thoughts expressed here are highly personal and experiential and consensus from a set of fellow suffering graduate students of the same field. You might have been a highly motivated successful individual belonging to this area, that doesn't mean you have the right to insult/ arrest/ throw stones at me/ us. Thank you in advance.
Biomedical Engineering. Or Bioengineering. It is such a freakish umbrella term. Interface of Biology and Engineering. Solving biological problems with engineering tools. Creating novel applications and coming up with innovative solutions that have mass impact. Sounds exciting! Diagnostics-Therapeutics-Equipments-Image Processing-Signal Processing- Electronic Circuits-Analog and Digital ICs-Microprocessors and Microcontrollers-Biomechanics-Medical Instrumentation-Medical Physics-Sensors-BioMEMS-Biocontrol Systems. Name it what! You touch upon every goddamn thing under the "bio"-"medical" sun! Depth? Nil. Zero. Shoonya!!!
The biomedical curriculum in India is majorly electronics as far as I know. But the knowledge level can never be equal to any electrical engineering undergraduate student. Take programming, no, cannot be on par with computer science. Cannot even think of comparing. Ok, atleast Biology?? No way, what do you think? A biotechnology or a pure biology student will know truck loads more than you, an unfortunate biomedical "engineer". And yes, please understand the world of difference between biotechnology and biomedical engineering. Everything boils down to making you feel as if you know nothing at all and leave you with an empty feeling of having done something vague for precious-four-odd years of your life. That thought of having no skill-set, scary isn't it? Atleast, to me it is, and this is what I am stuck with. Again, this may not be true for everyone.
If someone is "passionate" about biomedical sciences/ biomedical engineering with a focus on medical devices or applications that focus more on engineering - say, prostheses, brain computer interface, human computer interaction, image guided surgical tools, imaging modalities, fabrication of microsensors and so on, it would be extremely wise to major in electrical and computer engineering or instrumentation and control engineering or any core engineering discipline for that matter, like even chemical engineering which gives a decent understanding of materials science and thermodynamics OR pure mathematics, pure physics (it is all built on top of physics, communicated via mathematics). Even as you pursue a course on these core areas, it is very much possible to work on biomedical applications. That is the best example of extrapolation and translating core knowledge in a related domain. An interdiscplinary undergraduate major like biomedical does not lay a solid foundation on anything. Yes, it gives an overview of everything, which is okay, but never good enough. When it comes to working on something specific, it's like learning everything from the scratch, from the core subject perspective. If the ultimate aim is on learning, understanding, feeling satisfied about what you do later on in life, it might be good to refrain from BME while thinking of undergraduate major options.
Disclaimer: Most of the thoughts expressed here are highly personal and experiential and consensus from a set of fellow suffering graduate students of the same field. You might have been a highly motivated successful individual belonging to this area, that doesn't mean you have the right to insult/ arrest/ throw stones at me/ us. Thank you in advance.
Biomedical Engineering. Or Bioengineering. It is such a freakish umbrella term. Interface of Biology and Engineering. Solving biological problems with engineering tools. Creating novel applications and coming up with innovative solutions that have mass impact. Sounds exciting! Diagnostics-Therapeutics-Equipments-Image Processing-Signal Processing- Electronic Circuits-Analog and Digital ICs-Microprocessors and Microcontrollers-Biomechanics-Medical Instrumentation-Medical Physics-Sensors-BioMEMS-Biocontrol Systems. Name it what! You touch upon every goddamn thing under the "bio"-"medical" sun! Depth? Nil. Zero. Shoonya!!!
The biomedical curriculum in India is majorly electronics as far as I know. But the knowledge level can never be equal to any electrical engineering undergraduate student. Take programming, no, cannot be on par with computer science. Cannot even think of comparing. Ok, atleast Biology?? No way, what do you think? A biotechnology or a pure biology student will know truck loads more than you, an unfortunate biomedical "engineer". And yes, please understand the world of difference between biotechnology and biomedical engineering. Everything boils down to making you feel as if you know nothing at all and leave you with an empty feeling of having done something vague for precious-four-odd years of your life. That thought of having no skill-set, scary isn't it? Atleast, to me it is, and this is what I am stuck with. Again, this may not be true for everyone.
If someone is "passionate" about biomedical sciences/ biomedical engineering with a focus on medical devices or applications that focus more on engineering - say, prostheses, brain computer interface, human computer interaction, image guided surgical tools, imaging modalities, fabrication of microsensors and so on, it would be extremely wise to major in electrical and computer engineering or instrumentation and control engineering or any core engineering discipline for that matter, like even chemical engineering which gives a decent understanding of materials science and thermodynamics OR pure mathematics, pure physics (it is all built on top of physics, communicated via mathematics). Even as you pursue a course on these core areas, it is very much possible to work on biomedical applications. That is the best example of extrapolation and translating core knowledge in a related domain. An interdiscplinary undergraduate major like biomedical does not lay a solid foundation on anything. Yes, it gives an overview of everything, which is okay, but never good enough. When it comes to working on something specific, it's like learning everything from the scratch, from the core subject perspective. If the ultimate aim is on learning, understanding, feeling satisfied about what you do later on in life, it might be good to refrain from BME while thinking of undergraduate major options.
I'm not sure if this is the case with every university in India. I'm hoping not. But I have things to feel happy about! If not for BME, I would have never gotten to see California ;) You see, every cloud has a silver lining!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to going home soon,
Veena ;)
This is absolutely true! What does a biomedical engineer after graduating..a technician job at any hospital(except the lucky few who get to do the same job in a company :|). If not a job and on the research side-maybe you would be satisfied for spending six long years on studying "something". Of course I like Biomedical(physics basically) which is why I chose to do my masters at the US thinking maybe I would probably find some importance given to this field here. But after coming here I surprisingly found Biomedical professors telling me that "you want a job you should have chosen EE or CS".
ReplyDeleteAfter all this I still hope to find a job at the end of two years and get back to India ASAP! :)
Vaishu