Graduate Program Overview

The Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah is an internationally renowned center of basic and applied interdisciplinary research. The Department offers two graduate degrees: the Master of Science (M.S.) and the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). Graduate students can pursue research and educational opportunities in bioInnovate, biomaterials and therapeutics, biomechanics, computational systems and synthetic biomedical engineering, cardiac electrophysiology and biophysics, neuroengineering, and imaging.

Biomedical Engineering is a multidisciplinary field that uses research tools and techniques from virtually all of the physical sciences and the life sciences. The graduate curriculum at the University of Utah is therefore designed to accommodate a wide range of approaches. The goal is to provide an educational framework that will encourage graduate students to excel in their chosen area of specialization. Each student works with a graduate track advisor, their research advisor, and their research supervisory committee to design a program of study that meets the M.S. or Ph.D. requirements. The program of study should reflect the specific research interests of the student and should be designed to develop the highest level of expertise.

Each student’s Ph.D. qualifying exam is structured around their area of specialization and therefore courses completed as part of the program of study serve as partial preparation for the qualifying exam. The following areas are relatively common for Ph.D. qualifying exams and M.S. programs of study at the University of Utah: