Curriculum

Curriculum for Biomedical Engineering

Similar to other Engineering programs, after the first year the BME academic term will be offered in alternate terms, interleaved with Co-op work terms.

Many courses are offered only one time per year. Refer to the Faculty web site for course scheduling information. Consult with a program advisor for schedule planning advice.

¹CSC 115 may be substituted in a term when CSC 116 is not offered. CSC 116 is strongly recommended

²ELEC 365 is only offered in the Fall term.

³Additional prerequisite courses may be required.

⁴A Complementary Studies Elective course dealing with central issues in humanities or social sciences, as required by CEAB guidelines for complementary studies, and as approved by the Faculty of Engineering's BEng/BSEng Student Programs Committee. A current list of acceptable courses may be obtained from the Engineering Undergraduate Office

Biomedical Engineering Electives

ELEC 434          Biophotonics

ELEC 435          Medical Image Processing

MECH 450          Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering

MECH 450F          Mechanics & Energy Conversion in Living Cells

PHYS 432¹          Medical Physics

CSC 428          Computational Biology Algorithms

¹ Additional prerequisites required

Technical Electives*

CENG 455          Real Time Computer Systems Design Project

ELEC 404          Microwaves and Fiber Optics

ELEC 412          Electronic Devices II

ELEC 420          Nanotechnology

ELEC 450          Communications Theory and Systems II

ELEC 452          Optical Communication Technology

ELEC 453          Antennas and Propagation

ELEC 466          System on a Chip Engineering for Signal Processing

ELEC 484          Audio Signal Processing

ELEC 485          Pattern Recognition

ELEC 498          Honours Thesis

MECH 410          Computer Aided Design

MECH 420          Finite Element Applications

MECH 421          Mechanical Vibrations

MECH 423          Engineering Ceramics

MECH 430          Robotics

MECH 458          Mechatronics

MECH 466          MEMS

MECH 494          Thermofluids and Introduction to Mass Transfer

MECH 495          Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer

MECH 498          Honours Thesis

MECH 499          Technical Project

*One of these electives may be replaced by a 300 level CEng, Elec, Mech, SEng course. Also additional BME electives can be used to replace technical electives from this list.

Faculty

BHILADVALA, Rustom

Ph.D (Yale), Assistant Professor

Dr. Bhiladvala’s nanoresonator research program includes the interdisciplinary development of tools and methods for molecular diagnosis, to enable early detection of diseases such as cancers. His research interests include developing instruments for single-cell interrogation, focused on studying disease progression and rapid drug development. He teaches the senior UG / graduate course “Mechanics and Energy Conversion in Living Cells”. He has served as a grant proposal reviewer for the US NIH/NCI (National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institutes) and is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the Centre for Biomedical Research at the University of Victoria.

BRANZAN-ALBU, Alexandra

Ph.D (Bucharest), P.Eng, Associate Professor

Dr. Branzan Albu's research involves medical image analysis for computer-aided diagnostic and therapy planning. Dr. Branzan Albu has a number of ongoing collaborations on biomedical research projects. She is a Qualified Health Researcher affiliated with the Center on Aging at the University of Victoria. She has recently developed research partnerships with the British Columbia Cancer Agency, and with the Institut de Recherche en Geriatrie at Université de Montreal. Her medical imaging research is published in reputable venues, such as the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, the International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), and the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC). Dr. Branzan Albu has developed a new course in Medical Image Processing (ELEC 435). She has taught this course for the first time in Summer 2011. This course plays an important role in the Biomedical Option offered in the Electrical Engineering program.

CONSTANTINESCU, Daniela

Ph.D (UBC), P.Eng, Assistant Professor

Dr. Constantinescu's research expertise is in the area of haptics. Haptics refers to robotic technologies that enable users to touch and feel computer-generated objects. Her current work focuses on enabling multiple users, connected across a computer network, to touch, feel and manipulate a shared virtual environment together. The goal of this work is to extend the sense of touch across distance similarly to how existing video conferencing technologies extend vision across distance. Applications of this work include home-based and tele-rehabilitation, and virtual reality-based surgical training. In prior research, she investigated the development of virtual constraints for robot-assisted surgical procedures.

DECHEV, Nikolai

Ph.D (Toronto), P.Eng, Associate Professor

Dr. Dechev’s research includes development of a mechatronic hand rehabilitation system employing CPM (continuous passive motion) to aid injury recovery, and advanced lower arm prosthesis design. Additionally, he researches novel methods for the acquisition of bio-signals from the lower arm, including development of: implantable wireless sensors for the measurement of intra-muscular signals (electromyographic data acquisition), and an ultrasound-based sensor system for the non-invasive measurement of internal tendon motion within the wrist. Both projects aim at developing better methods for the control of advanced hand prosthesis. Dr. Dechev also has a research program in developing mechatronic equipment for cell-based research including: instrumentation for the automatic visual analysis and manipulation of cells in-vitro, and magnetic-based chips for the capture and sorting of magnetically tagged cells in-vitro.

DIMOPOULOS, Nikitas

Ph.D (Maryland), P.Eng, Professor

Dr. Dimopoulos' research involves the use of neural networks in the modelling of the biological activity of chemical compounds. Specifically, Dr. Dimopoulos and his team have developed methods that accurately model the Aldose Reductase (AR) Inhibitory Activity of classes of compounds including nitrophenyl derivatives, phenolic derivatives, and pyridazine derivatives. The inhibition of the AR enzyme is considered to be an approach to control diabetic complications, ischemia, abnormal vascular smooth cell proliferation, cancers, and mood disorders.

DONG, Zuomin

Ph.D (New York State), P.Eng, Professor, Chair of Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Dong’s research program includes portable diagnosis device and software for performing on-site assay, assay based analysis and diagnosis.

GEBALI, Fayez

Ph.D (UBC), P.Eng, Professor, Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Gebali's research involves the algorithms, design and programming of embedded devices, including those used in medical and healthcare applications. This includes a program on assistive technology using cell phones for the visually impaired to access public transit systems and provide warning to nearby vehicles of the presence of a visually-impaired person.

GORDON, Reuven

Ph.D (Cambridge), P.Eng, Associate Professor

Dr. Gordon's research involves the development of optical biosensors for the early detection of cancers and for drug discovery. He has been part of NSERC Strategic Projects involving collaborations with the BC Cancer Agency, Cangene, and he participates in Biopsys (the NSERC Strategic Network for Bioplasmonic Systems). He also has a research program on optical trapping of nanometric particles, with applications to the manipulation of viruses, proteins and other relevant biomaterials.

HERRING, Rodney

Ph.D (Birmingham), P.Eng, Associate Professor

Dr. Herring’s research program includes a medical imaging, diagnosis and treatment device based on acoustic confocal holography.

JUN, Martin

Ph.D (Illinois), P.Eng, Assistant Professor

Dr. Jun’s research program of Advanced Multi-Scale and Point-of-need Manufacturing includes biomedical device manufacturing and scaffold fabrication.

NADLER, Ben

Ph.D (Berkeley), P.Eng, Assistant Professor

Dr. Nadler’s research program includes thermomechanics of biomembranes and biological cells.

OSHKAI, Peter

Ph.D (LeHigh), P.Eng, Associate Professor

Research in Dr. Oshkai’s Fluid Mechanics laboratory includes biomedical devices: fluid dynamics and design aspects of replacement heart valves. They are developing a realistic simulation of a human hear capable of reproducing the hydrodynamic characteristics of the blood flow through diseased ventricles and valves

SO, Poman

Ph.D (Victoria), P.Eng, Associate Professor, Senior Member IEEE, Member ACES and CMBES, (ACES: Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society), (CMBES: Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society)

Dr. So’s research and industrial experience is in applied computational electromagnetics and object-oriented software engineering. He is a co-founder of the Faustus Scientific Corporation (Victoria, BC) and is the creator of the company’s MEFiSTo line of electromagnetic/bioelectromagnetic modeling software. Dr. So’s research includes microwave engineering, computer aided design and modeling of electromagnetic structures, computer simulation of bioelectromagnetic behaviors, and heterogeneous computing algorithms and software for electromagnetics/bioelectromagnetics applications. Since early 2009, Dr. So has been collaborating with the biomedical engineering department at VIHA in developing electronic stethoscopes for e-health and telemedicine.

STOREY, Margaret-Anne

Ph.D (Simon Fraser), Professor

Dr. Storey is a professor of computer science at the University of Victoria and a Canada Research Chair in Human Computer Interaction for Software Engineering. She has research expertise in computer supported cooperative work, human computer interaction, social media and information visualization. She applies this expertise to the development of collaborative technologies for authoring and leveraging biomedical ontologies and classifications. She is a principal investigator for the National Center for Biomedical Ontology, US and is a member of the committee responsible for developing the next version of the International Classification of Diseases with the World Health Organization.

SULEMAN, Afzal

Ph.D (UBC), P.Eng, Professor

Dr. Suleman’s research program includes fluid - structure interaction of heart valves and disease.

WEBER, Jens

Ph.D (Padeborn), P.Eng, Professor

Dr. Weber conducts research on engineering of biomedical software systems, in particular clinical information systems. His main interest is in formal and systematic methods for improving the safety, security and interoperability of biomedical software. He was a visiting professor at the UBC Faculty of Medicine (Family Practice) and is an adjunct professor in the UVic School of Health Information Science. He has published extensively in premier venues in the area of health informatics, including JAMIA, AMIA and ACM SIGHIT.

WEGNER, Joanne

Ph.D (Alberta), P.Eng, Professor

Dr. Wegner’s research includes the application of electrorestrictive polymers to prosthetics and artificial muscles.

WILD, Peter

Ph.D (UVic), P.Eng, Professor

Dr. Wild's research is focused on the development of fibre optic sensors to measure hydrostatic pressures in intervertebral discs, the esophagus and coronary arteries as well as sensors to measure contact stress in articular joints. His research has been supported primarily through NSERC Idea to Innovation grants and has been undertaken in collaboration with researchers and physicians in the Departments of Orthopaedics and Cardiology at the University of British Columbia.

WILLERTH, Stephanie

Ph.D (Washington) Assistant Professor

Dr. Willerth's research focuses on engineering tissues by combining biomaterial scaffolds with stem cells. One of her main areas of focus is neural tissue engineering and she belongs to the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (iCORD) - a BC based organization dedicated to finding potential treatments for spinal cord injury. She also has an on-going collaboration in the area of bone tissue engineering. She has published 10 peer reviewed research articles in this field and 3 book chapters on the topic of using stem cells for tissue engineering applications.