Matthew A. Franchek Director, Biomedical Engineering Program

Welcome to Biomedical Engineering!

On behalf of the engineering faculty, I am please to introduce you to the Cullen College of Engineering Biomedical Engineering Program. Our program unites the engineering faculty with the faculties at the Texas Medical Center in a collaborative effort to create a unique educational experience for our students. Our curriculum lies at the interface of the life sciences and engineering sciences and focuses on biosensing and bioanalytics. This interdisciplinary effort is the first multi-engineering department/multi-medical college collaborative program in the country emphasizing biosensing/bioanalytics. Our curriculum will first teach you the underlying behavior of biological systems and the fundamentals of the relevant engineering sciences. These distinct knowledge bases will then be integrated during your junior and senior years to give you a competitive and intellectual capability upon graduation. The biosensing component will help you to become the next generation engineers/scientists that advance home health care monitoring/diagnostics through innovations that can only be discovered at the life/engineering sciences interface. The bioanalytical component will teach you the fundamentals of methods for detection and analysis of biomolecules. Your capstone experience will provide you with a unique opportunity to experience a holistic approach to quality health care and to promote research. In addition, you will have an opportunity to gain hands-on experience through summer industrial internships, clinical internships or research programs. Many of you will also participate in research with our Biomedical Engineering Faculty as part of your senior honors thesis.

Why choose the University of Houston Biomedical Engineering Program? Our curriculum is built on a vision that fills a tremendous national need thereby providing you a high impact education. We are challenging the reactive health care practices of this county by establishing proactive health care practices and quality health care delivery through early health diagnostics (i.e., prognostics) and through targeted medicine delivery. Historically, health care has been delivered in a reactive manner. Symptoms must first occur before medical attention is sought. For catastrophic health events such as heart attacks, this reactive approach to health care is extremely costly in terms of human life and dollars. If the capability to anticipate catastrophic health events in advance of its occurrence or to completely circumvent the onset of the event through preventative programmable drug delivery means, total health care costs would be dramatically reduced and the quality of human life would be extended. Our vision will ultimately bring quality bedside care and medicine to every home and to every person.

I hope that you will find our biomedical engineering program exciting as well as inspirational. Whether your life-long-dreams are to be a scientific inventor, practicing physician, or member of the biotechnology workforce, our demanding curriculum will prepare you to achieve those goals.

Thank you for considering our program. I hope to see you in the Fall.

Warmly,

Matthew A. Franchek, Ph. D.
Director of the Biomedical Engineering Program