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Unread 16-06-2004, 12:56
Scott England Scott England is offline
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Re: Robotics and Biology?

Quote:
Originally Posted by a breezy era
This sounds really exciting. It isn't an easy major to see when you just look at a college profile. Is there a category it falls under? Biomedical engineering? Mechanical engineering? Biomolecular? Biology?

This would probably be my major of choice.
Depending on what university you end up at would affect how you find this field. While not all major engineering schools have specific degrees in biomechanical or biomedical engineering, Just about any major university with an Engineering Department will at least have some classes taught in the field as a branch of mechanical, electrical, or some other large field of engineering that you can focus your area of study with. I can think of several dozen biomechanics labs spread across the country off the top of my head and I'm sure there are many more. Virginia Tech just recently started offering a graduate program (MS, PhD, MD) in Biomedical Engineering by cooperating with Wake Forest. At the undergraduate level you really just major in Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial Systems Engineering or Engineering Science and Mechanics and work with professors to tailor your specialty however you'd like.

Here at Virginia Tech specifically, we've got 5 biomedical engineering oriented labs that I know of and there may be more. I'm typing this in the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Laboratory where i'm a graduate research assistant, we focus on trunk stiffness, back fatigue, strain, and injury, causes and results of falls, modelling of human gait, bipedal robotics and so on (shameless plug http://www.biomechanics.esm.vt.edu/msbiolab/) Next door is a lab that works primarily in Aerospace medicine, studying various stuff about inner ears and applying their discoveries to pilots and astronauts. Across the quad there are labs that work on impact biomechanics (car crashes, sports injuries etc), medical device development, workplace safety through fatigue reduction and so on.

If you've got several specific colleges you're looking at, just try a google search with the university name and "biomechanics" or "biomedical engineering" or anything related to field, it worked nicely for me just now finding stuff for Virginia Tech, Penn State, and Georgia Tech.
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