Revamped biomedical engineering curriculum for future-ready graduates

Abstract

With the implementation of the compulsory industrial internship for the biomedical engineering (BME) students at the National University of Singapore from July 2016, the Department of Biomedical Engineering had recently made a drastic revamp of its undergraduate curriculum. In our interaction with our students, alumni and industry partners, the feedback had been that our BME curriculum had too many core modules and it would be preferable to have some degree of “specialisation” for our BME undergraduates. The revamped curriculum will consist of (a) the first two years of the 4-year undergraduate BME program will be dedicated to the core courses and (b) the final two years will comprise the compulsory six-month industrial internship, a compulsory design course, a final year project plus eight technical elective courses. The latter will provide the students with more choices of elective courses for them to pursue a pathway of their interest. As an academic advisory to our students, the Department has recommended three pathways in which the students can pursue, namely (a) Engineering Research Pathway, (b) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Pathway and (c) Engineering Professional Pathway. There will be recommended courses for the students to choose under each pathway.