Biomedical Engineering Q&A - Session 1

hello everyone welcome to the first youtube live oh it we've technically done youtube live before but we've never done it through youtube so it's my first time seeing this screen but anyway i just wanted to come here kind of randomly because there's a lot of comments in several videos that i have not yet responded to hi kerala thank you for joining um i was just saying that you know like i we get a lot of comments and we don't always get to respond to all of them i usually respond to the ones that are you know the easiest to respond to in the moment but there are some other comments that kind of require more details and more explanations so it usually takes more time for me to really sit down and actually respond to the comments because i just i don't want to small talk anyone like i want to provide information but sometimes i think too much about it hey are you getting cancelled stop she's not gonna get why would i be getting cancelled hey everyone thank you for joining faye brown aloha great to see you on here thank you great to see you here too siri is that siri romeo uh yes thank you hopefully we won't ever get cancelled but now in today's day and age you never know um but anyway uh so i was saying i'm just gonna respond to some comments here um because it's just easier to talk than to type so i will try to do one of these really um what's somewhere i'm looking for casual live streams um at least one per week i i hope so but i would love to do at least two to three per week um i don't have any sort of like schedules in mind right now but i would love to have them scheduled just so everyone can know to tune in so if you guys watching live hey richard thanks for joining um would love to recommend any you know days or times that would work well for you let me know and maybe we can create a set schedule um so okay and then the third point i have here before i get into answering questions is that um well actually no there's one more thing sorry i was just gonna say that even though i'm responding to comments if you guys watching live right now have any questions i will definitely give priority to the live comments so gerardo faye brown romeo and richard and adrian if you guys have any questions let me know and i can answer them or try to answer them right now and then the last point i want to say before i start is just a little disclaimer that i am not the most knowledgeable person ever uh so i always speak from experience and i just say this to avoid getting cancelled someday but i just want to say that uh you know i'm just speaking from experience and i'm trying to help you guys uh with what i think would have helped me or has helped me so yeah but without uh just saying any more random things i'm just gonna go straight into it and the questions that we got in here okay so two days ago we have this question that says hello sister i recently got my bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering and i have applied for a master's in biomedical engineering at vub i have got an interview coming up and i literally have no idea how to get ready any tips would be much appreciated um i've never done a master's interview so that's a really hard question um i you know i can't speak from experience for that but i can save to you know kind of just i think if if they do ask technical questions it'll probably be about your undergraduate experience so just be preferred just just be prepared to tell your story and your experience and what you've done so far and they just want to make sure that you're competent and that you know what you're doing and that you've learned something so i would just practice you know telling my story telling about my internship experience but my research experience you know how why is what you're doing important um what was the overall goal of your research of any project you worked on um if you don't have any kind of like experience there's always like senior design or projects that you did in school so you know things like that um i think would be good to mention i don't think they're gonna ask you any any like super technical questions like oh like what's the powerhouse of the cell you know i don't know um but yeah so we have a live chat comment here that says i just graduated from bme and your videos helped me with interview prep a lot i wish i had known about your channel when i was a freshman thank you so much for making these videos well thank you so much for your comments it really means a lot i'm not trying to be like conceited or anything but my videos would have also helped me a lot uh when i was younger i mean and i think that goes for anyone like you know obviously looking back you could always tell your younger self oh you should do this you should do that so um that's kind of what i'm trying to do you know let you guys know what i know now that i wish i would have known earlier um because i totally agree with that feeling that you know if i had only known but but now we know and you know you see the information to just get better so but anyway thank you thank you for your comment that does mean a lot and definitely uh inspires us to keep going so thank you okay the next question is hi i'm finished i finished my classes and now i'm deciding my next course like biomedical engineering and biotechnology what's the right one to choose please suggest okay this question has an answer that i give a lot of people which is it is totally up to you and i feel like i say that a lot but it is the truth for a lot of things you know i i can't tell you if biotechnology or biomedical engineering is better like i don't think there should be a right answer to that obviously i could look up which one pays more which one has more jobs uh which one has a better expected job outcome you know things like that and i could certainly prepare a video or you know prepare myself with information to respond to questions like that but at the end of the day it's a career and i think a career in science or engineering is always going to be a good choice so i would never discourage anyone to pursue a career in stem i think most careers in stem will be profitable at the end of the day so not only that but they're also really you know touching careers i think if you like it like you can get to do a lot of cool things so um it's up to you i but if you just want to hear like the differences between biomedical engineering and biotechnology at a top level biomedical engineering is an engineering degree biotechnology period is not an engineering degree i mean it just doesn't have it in the name they're related because there's science and they they involve technology but biotechnology is not engineering you know you're not going to be taking classes like well i think you're not going to be taking classes like statics dynamics um you know things like things that engineers would use like linear algebra things like that i think biotechnology is more heavy on the science and yeah so i would think that biotechnology is very similar to biomedical science but i for example i wouldn't really be able to compare the two of those because i don't know much about it i just know that being me is an engineering degree that uses biology and other um more like specific biology fields like cellular biology biocompatibility biomaterials biotechnology things like that then you get into areas like um imaging uh photonics things like that so yeah so again a short answer is there's no wrong or right answer uh it's really up to you and your interests i can't tell you what to study because it's up to you like you know what do you see yourself doing where you can do different things with both both can also land you similar jobs but i get i think the main um thing to get out of this is that biotechnology is not an engineering degree not that it's that's a bad thing but it's just not engineering okay a b says what do you do as a biomedical engineer in the work field so i technically don't um what's the word in practice as an engineer so i graduated from biomedical engineering last may and at the time i had been working at a medical device startup as a product development engineer intern for a year so i worked as a product development engineer and then i kept working part-time as a product development engineer until february of this year so up until february i was still a quote-unquote engineer um and so what i did at the startup um well i did a lot of things like when you work at a startup you get to wear a lot of hats which is one of the reasons i would really encourage people to work at a startup when especially for internships i think it's really great because working on a startup you get to do different things in different areas so maybe there's one specific one that you really enjoyed working in and then you decide to pursue that specific area once you're a professional um so anyway when i was at the medical device startup you know i did a variety of things i acted as a quality engineer kind of like taking care of documentation and things like that then i would also act as a like a testing engineer where i would you know actually perform bench tests with the medical device prototypes sometimes i could act as a manufacturing engineer because i would assemble devices i would work with the software um yeah i sometimes i would be a packaging person spend one day folding a bunch of boxes and shipping things out then i became a regulatory affairs person and that's when i started working in the 510k submission for the medical device that we were working at at a startup and this is why i said work that this is why i said that working at a startup is pretty cool because you get to do different things because when i started working on the regulatory affairs side i realized that i really enjoyed doing that for some reason i loved reading about fda's rules and reading like long documents and reading about new research and looking at the novel medical devices in the market and things like that kind of doing like market research um i guess and uh i really enjoyed putting the submission together and i just really enjoyed regulatory affairs as a whole which is why i decided to go out and find a another part-time job as a regulatory of in regulatory affairs so between december and february i had two part-time jobs so i could work full-time um and so i was part-time at the medical device started part-time at a regulatory affairs consulting firm and in february they offered me a full time position so i took it and now i work there full time as a consultant for medical device companies um i'm still at the associate level but it's really cool like i really enjoy working in regulatory affairs and specifically in consulting other medical device companies because i think it's really cool to be able to work with different clients that are like the ceos or like upper management of new medical device companies so yeah that's really cool and i i get to work in a variety of medical devices like it can range from like you know gauss's sutures electronic stethoscopes um to like ai software so i think that concept is really cool to like be able to just have a knowledge in all those different areas and the thing about regulatory affairs is that when you you're putting those submissions together you have to present like the overall medical device so you have to understand biocompatibility you have to understand software you have to understand electric like electrical engineering a little bit um what else yeah that's pretty much like animal testing clinical studies things like that so i don't know i think it's just a really good mixture of things that i think really describe what a biomedical engineer is but at the end of the day you're not really acting as an engineer so you know it can be a feel that not everyone is interested in because it does require a lot of reading and documentation rather than a more like hands-on job that you would imagine you would have as an engineer but i personally really enjoy it so yeah hope that answers your question let me know if there's any like specific details you'd like to know i would love to answer um oh wow that's nice it's kind of flexible thank you for your answer yeah no problem yeah i really like that it's it's really flexible and specifically where i work like i actually work from home so it's super flexible and it just really works for me for me like i love working from home so yeah um okay so maryam said if i want to major in bme is there any university recommendation again this is a question we get a lot um thank you for asking the question but it's not really something i like answering because i mean you could you could google you know what's the what are the top universities for biomedical engineering and you'll get a bunch of results you will see the top universities for bme um a lot of them are expensive or they're in other cities that maybe you don't want to travel to or something like that so it's really up to you i mean i do think if you go to a better university like a more um a university with more prestige or that's like known for having a good program it can definitely has have its advantages like more companies will go to like career fairs and things like that so i'm not discouraging people from going to a good university good university because they do carry advantages but i also think that any university should be good enough like i think at the end of the day it's really up to you as a student and as a young professional to really put yourself out there to remember that it's not about your gpa it's about the experience it's about the network that you grow so yeah wherever you go just remember to to do those things um okay what are the differences between bme and bioinformatics and biotechnology so i kind of just went over the differences between bioengineering and biotechnology earlier basically one is engineering and the other one isn't biotechnology um i think it's really similar maybe to bioengineering where like it encompasses things in the biology field um like including agriculture and natural resources and things like that where like biomedical engineering is focused in the human medical field um it's also engineering so we got other things there bioinformatics is like a more specific field of both maybe um i'm not too sure about it actually but i think it involves kind of like computer engineering and like um yeah i'm not sure i'll have to answer that separately because i know i've searched for it but actually i mean let me just google it you can get an answer from google informatics is a sub discipline of biology and computer science concerned with the acquisition storage analysis and dissemination of biological data most often dna and amino acid sequences so yeah from my understanding it's kind of like you could expect to use like computer science but like in biology application so yeah i hope that helps um okay richard do you plan to stay in regulatory in the future any other roles you're interested in trying out um that's a good question i think i do uh plan to stay in regulatory affairs just because and and to be honest like i feel like it's a like when i first started researching about regulatory affairs i realized that most people don't get to it don't get into it this soon like most people get experience as an engineer working for the medical device company um in any kind of like engineering department then eventually when they want to i don't know i guess not do so much hands-on they'll transition into regulatory affairs or that's at least what i saw that a lot of people are kind of like or yeah it seems to be something you eventually get into uh but i just really liked it from the beginning i'm not sure why i think i l i just like that i don't know it has a lot of research and kind of like market research too and one thing that i really liked about it too is that it gives you the opportunity to one day work on your own like be your own boss without having to actually have like a medical device company you know like sure you could be like well i'm an engineer and i could be my own boss if i was the ceo of a company like i'll just develop a product and an idea and i mean that's something that i think would be cool doing too but regulatory affairs is so much more easy i think to be able to achieve getting to a point where you could be your own boss your own company work on your own if you wanted to uh if you know when i'm 50 and i want to slow down or like take my own clients on my own i could do that because by then i'll have like almost 30 years of experience in the field so i can be you know my own boss if that makes sense uh i like the idea of that and i like um just that it has that opportunity i also like that it's a field that i think is never gonna go away like even between like like during covet um i think they actually received even more applications like regulatory affairs people were even more busy um just because of all the medical devices that were being um created and so just the fact that it could um that it did not only survive a pandemic but it thrived during a pandemic i think it's a good sign that it's a good career that i don't think will ever go away so i i think it's a good choice but it's definitely not for everyone um but i mean before that i i didn't really know if there was something specific i wanted to do within the medical device industry i liked product development because it was kind of like regulatory where it encompasses a lot of different departments not just one but yeah it's it's really up to everyone but i think that's yeah i would definitely like to stay in this field okay jackie reyes hey amin you're here like your channel by the way how can i incorporate computer science into the biomedical engineering if you already answered this question forget it i mean i didn't technically answer this question but i kind of did someone asked like what's bioinformatics and i just looked it up and it's literally like a combination of computer science and biology but i also want to say that the medical device industry is like like they have we have so many software products and like even the products that you wouldn't think need software are like companies are now developing software for the products like so for example i mean i don't want to give too much detail but let's just say that every physical hardware product now has or not every but a lot of them are having like mobile apps for example like now everything has an app where you can see the data that it's collecting or things like that um there's also a lot of ai software it's being developed and soft there's a thing called like software as a medical device so a software product can be considered a medical device so i think there's a lot of opportunities for software engineers and computer science people to get into the medical field and use their expertise and apply it in biomedicine so yeah i mean there's a lot of opportunities and yeah well thank you for asking your question i think that was really good and and yeah there's definitely an opportunity so we have a next question that says is a phd in biomedical engineering worth it again uh um it depends if on what you want to do i don't think uh an advanced degree could ever hurt you um but i mean i i have heard of people being overqualified but it really depends on what you want to do like i feel like a phd is mandatory if you want to be in academia like if you want to be a professor or do research and things like that so yeah if you're thinking of that academia you definitely need a phd if you're thinking of going to industry i mean a phd is still good um yeah i think it's definitely worth it i if it's something you're interested in pursuing i would definitely do it okay okay miriam said thank you so much for your answers richard also said thanks so much love your channel keep it up thank you both so much for asking your questions um and joining this life i really appreciate it and i'm glad we could help okay babe brown was doing my research then came across this university of pittsburgh he being the very first in the us to develop a program that consists a dual degree in bme and nursing oh wow i have never heard of a vme and nursing degree that's really interesting um any thoughts i mean i would love to um just read more about it because i've never heard about this degree before i've heard of like combining bme with like like the medical track like if you want to be a doctor um but for nursing i mean that's really interesting like i wonder why they would do that like if it's just to give you the option of do you either want to be an engineer or do you want to be a nurse which are kind of very opposite um i know there's like clinical engineering where you actually work in the hospital and i guess they kind of technically have similar roles to nurses so that might be it actually maybe that with that degree you can kind of be like like like a clinical engineer i also know there's like medical device specialists like there's this university in houston that has a program for cardiac device specialists that it it's like a six month training program after you complete your bachelor's that um when you complete that six-month program that one is specific for electrophysiology which is like a sub-field of of cardiology and i know people that do that program like either end up working at medical devices medical device companies or at the hospital or kind of like both um so maybe that's kind of like it like you become like a medical device specialist in a certain field i don't know i i i hope that gives you some thoughts but i don't think it actually gives you a clear answer but that's really interesting i would definitely consider it i mean if you're interested in both sides but yeah jackie said thank you you're welcome um okay we have see you with george by the way um sorry guys if i mispronounce your names like i also have a really kind of like weird name so i totally feel bad thinking that i might be mispronouncing it but i'm sorry i wish you could just let me know how it's spelled but i'm sorry for mispronouncing um can you explain about the bme syllabus yes i actually want to make a video on this like a more detailed video so i'll leave that for later but i can give you like a high level um i guess overview of what my bme degree was so for background information i want to say that i was a transfer student from another university that did not offer bme my other university was back where i lived kind of and um i was undecided for the first two years of my college career until i decided to pursue engineering and then i started taking like engineering um engineering uh like prerequisites kind of like you know just like my science courses pre-calculus calculus all that um so with that being said i think you do need to be ready for calculus one uh so if you didn't take pre-cal you know take pre-call in college like if you didn't take it in high school you'll need to take it in college um but other than that you kind of go in take intro to bme which kind of like introduces you to bme in the different fields at my university there were three concentration concentrations which were biomechanics cellular and tissue engineering and biomaterials and the third one was bio technology and imaging something like that so you first have to take your core bio medical engineering classes which included things like cell biology biomaterials biomechanics um i'm blanking out but i think bioinstrumentation biotransport phenomena like those were like the core bme like uh low level classes then you got into your higher level well actually biotransport was one of like the higher level vme core classes you also had like product development which was like a pre-senior design kind of just like taught you how to come up with a medical device idea and how to market it and how to think of the regulatory strategy things like that um then i mean then senior design was your last class where you actually developed a product a medical device or medical product then depending on your concentration you chose like your biomedical engineering electives so my concentration was bio material slash cell and tissue engineering so my concentration electives were things like um cellular engineering biocompatibility um biocomputation and imaging i think um but then you know if you took the biomechanics concentration then you would have to take biomechanics to um thermodynamics i don't know things like that things related to the concentration you know um then you also have like your general engineering classes like um linear algebra differential equations the calculus i took up to calculus 3 but they only required up to calculus 2 which calculus 2 is actually harder than calculus 3. um what else yeah like general engineering and then depending on your concentration you also took related general engineering electives so i took statics and dynamics and one class called engineering analysis so it really depends on the concentration that you choose you know they let you have those electives but you do have those core biomedical engineering classes but it depends on your university every university will offer different courses but i hope that gives you a better idea of what to expect um okay hot dice miniatures i was going to a college in canada to get a biomedical technologist diploma which is less than a bachelor's in the us i was wondering if there was an associate degree equivalent in the us yes there is it's called biomed technician i think um i've heard of it i know agent's uncle is a biomed tech right yeah um so i know that's a thing i think biomedical technicians are kind of like give maintenance and repair to medical devices so i think they might actually work at the hospital if i'm not wrong but yes they mainly do like i think they mainly do like repairs and maintenance to medical devices which is actually what a lot of vietnamese do in mexico i believe um so yeah i i think that's the equivalent and i think there's actually a youtube channel that of a girl who's a biomed tech uh i don't know her name or i don't remember it right now but you should look it up because there there is someone that has a youtube channel that talks about being a biomedical technician um but yes there is an associate degree related to it okay karina p said if i'm thinking about going into the industry would there be more job opportunities on a more rehab slash medical device track or more of the chemical engineering pharma truck that's a hard question for me to answer because i don't know much about chemical engineering or pharma to be honest but i do know pharmaceuticals are supposed to be a big industry probably even bigger than medical devices but just because i'm in the medical device industry i know more medical device companies and things like that so i'm kind of biased to answer that question but um i mean i know i mean like if if you want to to go to the chemical engineering track you probably be best if you actually had a chemical engineering degree um so if you already have a biomedical engineering degree i think it might be better to go to the medical device industry um because i could see how pharma might want to hire more chemical engineers just because you have more knowledge of the chemistry but i mean they still have like quality assurance regulatory people so you could definitely go there too but just because i'm biased i'm gonna say the medical device would be better but don't quote me on that but that that's just my opinion i i hope it helps okay next question is i'm an incoming sophomore in bme undergrad and i'm not really sure what i exactly want to do do you have any suggestions on how to get started on research or explore more subfields in bme i totally like i totally understand your feelings right now i was on the same boat and i would hear people say like oh yeah i work in a research lab or work in a research lab and i'd be like what does that even mean um i started looking into it and you know you you work in a research team under a professor and it depends on your research lab on the project it depends what you actually do but you know the best first step is to well look at the different research labs that there are at your university maybe choose one or two that you're interested in reach out to those professors it'd be best if it's a professor that you actually have classes with um just so that you know they'll know you and they'll be like oh yeah you know that way when you ask if you can join um they won't be weirded out or it'll the they'll be more likely to say yes if they know you um but i also want to mention that you can also do research outside of the biomedical engineering engineering department like you can go to the biology department um there were a lot of people in my bme class that did uh labs that were like we're in research labs that were under the mechanical engineering department because mechanical engineers also do a lot of biomedical related research um like gerardo i don't know if he's here still uh he was like the first person to join but he's a mechanical engineering um student and he did um research in prosthetics so you know mechanical engineering departments also have biomedical research um so just you know look at the different research opportunities there approach the professors that's really what i did and that's how i joined the research lab eventually there's also like um scholarships that can help you find or like fund research easier because you know when you ask the professor a lot of times they think well how am i gonna fund you how am i gonna pay you to do research or i mean not they don't always pay you but you you still they still need resources so if you come with a scholarship backing you up i think that's a good idea i personally looked at my own university like they had their own scholarship program for research during the summer so i just did that and i applied and i got it and that's what funded my research during the summer um but you can also look at other universities that um you can do research and you can do research outside of your school so yeah really just just search start locally start with your university but you know just check out what's out there too um exploring more subfields and bme i mean it's tough i i you know i i think the best way to learn is by meeting people like create linkedin profile create a linkedin profile connect with people in different industries um i am sure that a lot of professionals would actually be really happy to talk to you just to tell you what they do also visit our channel see the different podcasts that we've had with so many bme professionals um because at the end of the day that's the purpose of our podcast to showcase like the different things you can do with me and me so i would really encourage everyone if you haven't already to watch our podcast because best way to learn what you want to do is like hear someone say it and you'll be like oh that sounds cool i want to do that so i would encourage you all to to watch them just so you can listen to other people's experience because my experience you know is very specific and not everyone wants to be in regulatory affairs so definitely go listen to other people reach out to other people attend events if possible just so you can talk to people so yeah i hope that helps okay hey brown thank you so much you're awesome superstar keep on shining strong and beautifully i apologize for my grammar and doing my best very best to improve my writing oh your grammar is actually really good like um no yeah it's great and no need to apologize like english is also my second language so i think learning a new language is so hard so you wrote it perfectly like you have nothing to apologize for okay we have zelek zlek i feel deeply intimidated by the amount of info i have learned i have to learn especially with biology any tips on how to study it's literally the only thing that's holding me back from studying bme that is a great question um obviously everyone learns different in different ways you know like what works for me might not work for you and i mean the truth is that you're gonna have to learn how you best learn and i think that's part of college to to learn how how you learn the best i don't know if that makes sense but for me it was always writing stuff like um i would always write things down like two or three times just so that they could stay in my head you know if i just read the book and highlighted things that would not work for me like i had to feel pain in my hands to be able to remember and memorize and that was just my thing you know like i really had to write things down on paper because if i typed it like it also didn't really help that much so that really helped me especially when it came to memorizing like biology um so that might help you i know a lot of people um say that one thing that helps them a lot is like studying with other people that personally never helped me really because i would just get distracted and i knew i had to write things down anyway so i couldn't do that with other people i i would always study on my own and then test myself by studying with people so definitely you know i mean again it's up to you and how you learn but for me it was always writing and then testing myself through other people you know having friends quiz you and things like that so yeah i would recommend that um but again everyone's different so if you just have to read a book and you memorize it that's even better um but i hope that helps but i mean it's okay to not know and that's part of learning and growing you know don't be afraid like just do it and if if you try hard enough like you you will make it like i do want to mention that when i first started bme i felt like everyone around me was so smart and that everyone knew so much and i felt so dumb around everyone and then with time i started realizing that everyone felt the same way um so don't feel discouraged you know everyone struggles and you're gonna struggle that's just the truth but it gets better it really does um so just don't get discouraged keep going and you'll be great okay we have next question says there is a course in my university that spans two semesters called a graduation project and i was wondering if you did something similar to that if so do you have any tips i think i might have had so in my school we had this class called senior design which also was two semesters and so what you basically did was come up with the medical device um idea and you had to start from scratch like doing research making sure that you know it was a feasible idea an actual medical need then you start with like um i guess customer requirements like user needs then you translate those into like engineering requirements um then you start building a prototype then testing it verifying verification and validation um i think you'd also have to do things like um like business like create a business model how are you actually gonna you know do this how much is it gonna cost how much funding you need then a regulatory strategy like how are you gonna put in the market then you're starting to like marketing things like value proposition things like that so i'm not sure if it's the same um course but it probably is uh but if i have any tips i mean one would definitely be get a good team don't get a team of slackers or a team that you've never been in with before because uh you don't know how you're gonna work with them so if you can definitely work with people that you've worked with before that you trust i made a mistake of not doing that and i uh highly regret it so really recommend getting a good team um next thing is i guess just thinking of a feasible idea you know we all would love to solve all the problems in the world but that's not realistic so you know definitely think of a realistic idea i mean you know it's you're we're young and we're students it's not like we're actually creating a medical device company so you're allowed to have a little bit of fun with it um but you can also actually develop something real out of it which i think is really cool so um i mean it's up to you you know if you want to treat it as a class or as a potential startup company um it's up to you but i would choose a team that has the same mindset as you and you're all in agreement with what you're doing what kind of device you will do and things like that but i mean communication is key assigning responsibilities um sorry and just uh keeping good management of your time is really good so yeah okay which do you think uh are the best cities to look for biomedical engineering job postgrad for research and design uh that's a really hard question i think i've looked it up before and i believe it's places like boston um oh my gosh i forgot but hey you know like the bigger cities are obviously better actually i've heard that new york doesn't really have anything but i think places like boston um what else california is really big um i have to look it up if you guys watch the salary video like i actually mentioned that like the top paid cities and that car responds to the cities with the best jobs so yeah i hope that helps a little okay to be honest i love physics and math but biology has always been a difficult topic mainly because of my professors i definitely agree that professors um really play a big role in how well you understand a material and that's really sad um yeah it's really sad especially in college like i always felt like i learned so much more in high school than i did in college because the professors and a lot of the professors in college weren't that great um but yeah um i mean honestly not being great at biology is not gonna kill you like i mean in your classes maybe like it's gonna be a real struggle but don't think like oh should i really just be me like i'm not that good of biology like i prefer physics and things like that like um you don't have to use biology if you don't want to like you know if you want to be more like a design engineer you'll never use biology um so it's really up to what you want to do but as far as actually you know taking your degree you do need biology because it's a big part of bme um but there's other you know if physics is your thing maybe you would be more interested in imaging or biophotonics things like that that are more related to physics um so yeah i would definitely explore those fields if if physics is like your your strengths okay karina p that helps thank you i'm currently an undergrad so deciding on my major you're welcome no problem like i said i wasn't decided on for two years so no no worries okay faye brown based on your experiences what is your most favorite part of engineering so far so far um i like that at the end of the day we're working on something that will help someone's health i love that idea and i mean you could say well i could be a mechanical engineer working in a medical device company you know i'm also helping someone which is which is true um but what i like specifically about bme or what i do right now is just like the how interdisciplinary it is like you get to learn about different topics and kind of like apply them all in one thing like i was mentioning before like in my job i have to understand biocompatibility like biology electrical safety electromagnetic compatibility software sterilization shelf life like things like that animal studies clinical studies understand the regulations understand the marketing a little um so i just love that like in disa interdisciplinary teeth that bme offers uh so yeah that's personally why i what i really love about be me but that's also something that a lot of people don't really like about bme so it depends on on your interests okay maria said can you explain what a bio about what when you really does i mean it's it's a tough answer because there's so many things you can do with bme you know like i already talked about what i do as a regulatory first person but it depends you know what kind of job you get what kind of position you get um we have a um a video talking about the different careers career paths so you should definitely check that out if you're interested um let me just put the link in the comments really quick um because i just don't want to take time away from the other questions that i haven't answered because i know you have the video and there's just so many things that you can do that i don't wanna um talk about there for too long okay sorry this is taking longer than i expected but let me just send the link really quickly okay i actually have someone backstage sending comments um so it's just me right now um okay in your opinion what are the prospects of data science in biomedical engineering or generally software engineering dme i mentioned this before i think they're great because now that i'm in regulatory affairs like i actually get to see like all the novel devices that are coming to the market so many of them are soft like either pure software or have a software component so i think um if you're a software engineer you're in computer science but you're you want to apply it to the biomedical field there's a lot of potential there also if you're a biomedical engineer who's interested in learning programming or software uh you should definitely do that because there's a lot of potential okay um when you realized you wanted to be me being me did you consider the other engineering jobs and so what allowing you to choose beauty so i i mentioned this earlier i was at another university that was smaller they only offered mechanical electrical and civil um i i didn't want civil because i wasn't really interested in civil engineering like construction and things like that i mean i don't know much about the field but that's just what i thought it was and i wasn't really interested so i was like no no and then so it was between electrical and mechanical electrical just seemed way too complicated it seemed really cool but it just seemed too hard and also mechanical was the more general so i just figured i'd do that um but then i met someone who was a bme and actually they were me like um they were a physics major but there was like a bme concentration and i really was interested in what they were doing then i learned about chemical engineering so i had to make a decision between the two i ultimately chose bme because it involved medical technologies and i just thought it was really cool so yeah i just thought it was really cool um i don't think i really went too far in my research like actually researching salaries or jobs or things like that like i just chose it because it sounded cool and i really enjoyed biology so that's why i chose it but i think any engineering degree i mean is a good career so yeah um how important is gpa for grad school i get so stressed pressure to keep my gpa high i feel like i would enjoy my major so much if i just focused on learning instead of grades yeah i i totally agree i mean that's a tough question because i think for grad school your gpa is more important than they would be if you just wanted to go into industry because for industry it's more important that you have internship experiences and things like that for grad school i feel like gpa is more important but it's also not like they expect like a 4.0 um it really depends on the university though so i would check the requirements of any university you're interested in but i would say that you know you have to get have a good gpa i don't think you have to have like a perfect gpa um but i do get the struggle of like you know you should um of having to care too much about your grades when that sometimes can actually distract you from really learning um but yeah i think i mean for grad school the most important i think would be getting like research experience and things like that so i would definitely focus on that um but your gpa is also important for grad school for industry i feel like it's not that important but um you're yeah for industry i feel like your experience tells a better story than your gpa okay next question any funny moments in your biomedical engineering journey um that's a good question i mean i can only think of one thing like right now on the spot but there was this one time that i was waiting for the bus at my apartment complex to go to school and this guy like approached me and we just started talking and he was like so what what major are you and i said biomedical engineering and he said biomedical engineering like what is that like he said is that making like creating designer babies and i was like what what do you mean and he said yeah bio babies engineering designing i mean i just thought that was funny kind of ignorant but i mean i i don't blame him like um you know like a lot of people didn't know what biomedical engineering was when i told them even my family i mean i didn't know what bme was until i actually pursued a degree in it so but i just thought it was pretty funny that he thought i'd dislike babies and that i was learning about that which i mean i guess it's kind of like a related feel more if you get into genetics and genetical engineering i guess the sign of babies could become a thing or are becoming a thing i'm not too familiar with the area but i just thought it was funny um so yeah okay hi do you think bme would be helpful for a career in forensics or anything marine related sorry it's a weird question it actually isn't a weird question at all i'm glad you asked that i'm not sure about marine i've never heard about marine research involving bme i know you can do like more like veterinary um but maybe a marine i'm not i've never heard anything of it um but for forensics uh we were actually told once that yes you could use bme in forensics and actually in my what class was it biotransport phenomena class um i forgot what i forgot what the topic was but um sorry i'm trying to remember but there was a question or there was this thing that we were learning and you could basically apply it to find out like to find out like the time someone had died or something like that like it was something like like the question was where like um this body was found at 8pm and then the water's temperature was so many degrees the body's temperature was so many degrees like could it be possible that the body was actually found at this time or i don't know i i'm sorry i'm like messing it up but basically yes like um like the point of the question was to find out if like the person who found the body like was telling the truth about the time that they found it or if maybe they had killed them or something like that like it was a very weird question but you have to actually use math um specifically like biotransport equations to like i don't know something about heat transfer and things like that like it was really interesting um so i think you can definitely use forensics i think or use bme in forensics and actually one time i think someone told me that you could use bme to like in law um like if they're trying to investigate how someone died in the car crash or something like that like you could use biomedical engineering i've only heard these things like twice in my life so i don't know too much about it i'm sorry but i mean if if you're interested in it i would definitely recommend researching more about it so i hope that helps and it was definitely not a weird question um i think it's really interesting question okay um dan said you're awesome please do not give up on this channel your efforts are really worth when people need this kind of content thank you all the best well thank you so much for your nice comment uh would definitely try to keep it up okay faith brown that is a very good question that is really awesome for korean forensics and right yeah i got at like try taking a what's my learning style test online to see what your style might be i started enjoying biology after finding that active recall and visual drawings work for me oh wow that's really cool yeah i think that's a really cool tool to find out how you are best at learning slack said by the way your english is remarkable it's my second language as well and you're being so fluent and it gives you hope oh thank you that means a lot to me yeah i i still get a little bit um self-conscious i guess about my english i know sometimes like depending on how confident i feel like sometimes my accent will just be terrible and i don't know like if anyone is bilingual here here um apart from slick and i mean just by seeing your names i would assume that a lot of you are bilingual um um but i want to say that i don't know if you guys feel the same but i feel like like we bilingual people have kind of like a search in our minds that kind of turns off and on because i like i had this professor who his first language was like well i'm sorry it's gonna sound really bad but i don't know what the first language actually is like the language but he was from india so he would speak like his native language and like that was first language and when he would speak english like within five minutes his accent would change between like perfect english to like a really heavy indian accent and i was just like so impressed and like um in in that because i just never heard that before you know you would think someone's accent kind of like develops and fades out over time um but his kind of like turned on and off and i think i've noticed that in me too like i feel like if i get really nervous my spanish like my mexican accent starts peeking out more and more um so maybe we're like making a conscious effort to try to imitate the american accent all the time but if we're nervous we kind of mess it up i don't know but let me know if you guys have any issue with that but anyway i just want to say that practice makes perfect so if you want to you know improve your english you definitely have to speak it with other people even if you feel dumb or i was when i was in middle school i was really embarrassed to speak english out loud i don't know why i guess i was just afraid of sounding dumb um and honestly and even in college i feel like it would make me self-conscious sometimes because i would feel like i don't know people would think that i couldn't speak or anything like that and even right now i feel like my vocabulary is very limited and i just feel like i was better at speaking um i just had more professional book vocabulary but i mean it's a struggle and i saw this quote the other day that said like an accent is um proof or evidence that you're brave or something like that and i was like oh i'll just think that i'll just think that i'm brave because i learned another language so so yeah i mean don't get discouraged you're really an accent i feel like it's like a like flavor i don't know i feel like you're adding flavor to the language like it's different you know you want it salty or sweet like it's just different flavors um but yeah sorry i kind of deviated a lot um i'm in 12th grade and i would like to know which all subjects i should concentrate in order to avoid much struggle after joining bme okay um so if you mean what classes you should be taking during high school i mean i i went to a really small high school so they didn't offer any like ap courses which could have been really helpful um but you know if you really want to advance your like the credits you have to take and things like that um i would really recommend taking any ap courses if you can like science like physics chemistry biology things like that um calculus is also really important because you're gonna need it um so if you can take precalculus or even calculus in high school i would definitely recommend that okay medical device academy hello said i think biomedical engineering is a great field because you can develop devices that save lives devices that are life-supporting and devices that can improve the quality of life even children that is a great um great description of why bme is great and guys if if you were doubting if vme is good medical device academy has someone with a chemical engineering degree who is a very successful professional with decades of experience saying that bme is good so if you don't trust me trust them um so thank you rob for for saying that um okay i've upped be me for my bachelor's though i'm not good at bio but this is a unique and creative field with less competition so that's why i agree but i would not say that it has less competition if anything i feel like it has a lot of competition um especially because if you want to get an engineering job at a medical device company you will be competing about against some mechanical engineers sometimes it depends on what you want to do i personally for example when i started my internship my my first internship while i was in college i was the only bme student and there were two mechanical engineering students and so it was three of us and i don't want to say too much because i'm afraid they're watching this video if they are i'm sorry but i think actually the ceo that we worked with didn't really like one of the mechanical engineers um so i i don't want to say too much but you know that's just kind of like proof that your major at the end of the day it really doesn't matter it's up to your work ethics and you know how willing you're to learn and things like that so yeah but um i guess just to answer the question there is competition in bme i would say there there is a lot but i guess it depends on on the area you're looking at okay um i am from india what are the procedure for joining as a biomedical engineer in abroad i mean singapore us likewise that's a really tough question because i yeah i don't really know much about international um like applying to jobs and things like that i know it's a whole different process and i should actually interview someone who's done that because i it's a question we get a lot um but unfortunately i did not have an answer for that i just know you know it can be struggles so but there there are people who make it and work here i think you just have to look for the connections and you know but you know don't be discouraged like there are people who get jobs um that are not from the us um but it's definitely it definitely requires more steps than it would from someone who's here um okay so like said do you need a special computer most engineers i know always end up buying pcs that have high specs and i'm in the process of buying one so i wanted to be able to work for me in the future and fidel replied depends on what engineering you're interested since that can vary and maybe you can do most of your work at your university lab however if you're either civil or mechanical you might end up requiring to use cats software and you can google those programs and see the requirements for your pc i definitely agree um that was a great response um for bme i mean i can tell you a couple of softwares that we use we we did use a cat software which was solidworks for a little bit but didn't really use it much but again it depends on your interest and like if solid works it's actually like designing and something that you want to do then get a computer that is capable of doing that programming things like that um i always use i don't want to say basic computers but i never got anything super fancy like i had a yoga lenovo for a while and then i had a macbook pro um for the rest of my career as an undergrad and again i used solidworks um i used arduino i used r studio um what else matlab all of those were compatible so i yeah it i don't think there were any like special requirements honestly the most important thing will probably be just like storage and speed um but yeah i'm not too familiar with that uh or what would be the best but um yeah i personally again never used any kind of like special requirements i think basic computers kind of worked with what i did okay hi i'm a pre-med student and i want to possibly do research in dme tissues so would it be helpful to get an undergrad and be me or could i learn as a as i go okay let me read that again hi i am a pre-med student and i want to possibly do research in gaming tissues so would it be helpful to get an undergrad and be me or could i learn as i go i'm bad at math and my gpa is important hey alyssa um thanks for asking your question so i think as a pre-med student you could definitely do research without being a bme especially because if if you're doing a research um you're not gonna need like like and i'm assuming like working in a wet lab environment like working with tissues working with cells you won't use math that much i mean you will to like calculate concentrations of solutions or cells and things like that so basic math is important but i don't think you would have to have an engineering degree to be able to do research um so yeah i hope that helps but yeah i wouldn't think so sounds some point in my head but i get nervous as soon as i start speaking literally all my confidence goes down as soon as i start speaking but when i get in my zone i almost sound native yeah i totally agree with that especially when you sing too like when you sing like the accent goes away i don't know why it's so interesting um okay alyssa i have been in college for like four years and i should have graduate graduated i recently have taken up an interest in beaming but i don't know if it's worth it changing my major i have a lot of self-doubt i mean if you've already completed four years and you're almost done with your pre-med i would just um finish that and then i mean did you do pre-med because you were interested in medical school are you kind of thinking you don't want that anymore there is a kind of graduate degree that's called an md slash phd it's a very ambitious degree but it basically gives you a medical doctor degree as well as phd so if you're not interested in which one you want maybe you could do both um but yeah i mean i'm just reading your question but yeah i mean i think they're both kind of related which is a good thing but you know you could do your masters in bme if if you wanted to be me instead of going to medical school like that's totally okay i think um most most masters in bme require you to have a bachelor's in engineering or a science-related field so i think you should be good you may be lacking some few courses that you could be able to take um but you know i i saw this thing one time that said like like it was someone that like for example like studied law but they wanted to be i don't know an artist instead or let's just say an engineer um so they they did four years of law and they were like oh like i really want to do engineer but i already spent four years in law school like i don't want to throw away those four years um but i i think that's something that we all think but we also have to remember well are you gonna trade in four years for like the rest of your life you know like i feel like you the decades that follow that are much more important um so yeah it sucks that you already spent four years and you realize that you didn't really like it um but at the same time you have a whole life ahead of you you know so just do what makes you happy and what you're actually passionate about um you're in a good situation because pre-med and bme have like overlapping courses so i don't think it should be too bad for you oh alyssa i maybe have like 35 of my degree completely okay then um i think you could make the switch if you really wanted to i mean again um you probably took some like science courses so you might be able to count those for bme but did you say that you're not that good at math um i'm bad enough my gpa is important um yeah i mean you do use a lot of math and engineering um but you can learn i mean again uh at the end of it and you said gpa is important but yes i i understand that gpa may be important for you and it is i'm not saying it shouldn't be or that you shouldn't care about your gpa because it's good to care about your gpa and you should but at the end of the day experience is more important um so don't kill yourself over um you know not being so good at math and not having a perfect gpa like it's all about being a hard worker and being dedicated to what you do i think and then you should be fine yeah like you know if i think you can always work on things that maybe you're not that good at um the the math that you do as a bme i mean it is a lot but it's not as much as other engineerings would do i would assume um so you can definitely learn it i i think i mean you sound like a smart person so i'm sure you will be able to um accomplish whatever you dedicate yourself to i hope that helps um okay next question does the bme degree get easier as you actually start classes related to the field right now i'm taking core engineering classes that all engineering students take yes i okay so i think i mentioned earlier in the beginning i felt like it was really hard and unless i kept going um it kept getting harder i mean your classes keep getting harder but you actually start being better at learning and i mean i don't know if it's true but i feel like the brain the brain kind of feels like when it comes to learning i think of it as like a muscle almost um that you kind of just exercise and you know you're exercising to your brain to be able to learn um the wires kind of just click and connect in your brain with time and yeah i think the core of an engineering degree is learning how to solve problems and learning to understand things so yeah i i i do think classes are harder but they actually get easier if that makes sense i don't know um i hope that makes sense but that's definitely how i felt and how i've seen a lot of people feel okay is there any kind of application for python or any other programming languages and be me um yes i'm just thinking but um i was never much of a programmer but i did use matlab and our studio and um arduino i don't think those are languages but those were the platforms or the softwares that we were using um but yeah that that's what i saw the most hi i'm colombian made it into georgia tech great job program will be me however the cost is quite high for an international student i also made it into a good local university which is also good can i sorry i lost the second part of your question is a bachelor is that important or should i stay at the local and then come for the masters um so if you're really sure that you want a masters i would say the masters is more important but then what if you're not sure if you want a masters you know what if you just do a bachelor's and you stick with that um i know georgia tech is a really good university and i've seen a lot of people come out of there being really successful um it definitely gets a lot of recognition so a lot of companies go to georgia tech to recruit um but with that being said i also think you can be successful wherever you go it's up to you and what you do with it um uh i'm just thinking but uh a tough question you know i one of one person i met once um like a professional in the industry he's like a cto of a company right now said that he really thought that where you do your bachelor's he said your bachelor's isn't about where you do it it's about what you do with it and then your graduate degree it's like who you do it with something like that but basically he said that he really thought that where you do your grad to a degree is really important um i don't know if that's true or not i i still stand um strong with the opinion that you can be successful wherever you go but i do think some schools have advantages um so you know just just to just really analyze like are you sure you you want a masters because maybe you don't then maybe you'd want to put more importance to your bachelor's i don't know if the local university is good maybe you could go there first and then transfer to georgia tech that way it reduces the cost a little bit also consider community college um i didn't do community college but i honestly should have because you can take some of your general core classes there and you know save money so i would definitely recommend that just reading next to the questions dr x can i do msc and surgery after msc and be me um i'm not sure where the msc is is it a masters like masters of science let me see yeah i've never heard of a master's in surgery so i'm not going to be able to answer that because i would think that to study surgery you'd have to get a medical doctor degree first which is four years after bme but um you can go into medical school with a bme degree so yeah i'm not really sure about that question sorry um okay medical device academy said it sounds like a video dedicated to speaking techniques for non-native speakers might be really helpful in your audience i definitely agree with that i think it would be really helpful for a lot of us because we do i do think that we have a lot of international people here so thank you thank you for the recommendation um carol said i wouldn't say bachelor isn't important because there's a lot of people who have done great things without it but it helps the odds i guess also i'm not sure if you can get masters without bachelors but i don't know tbh marco said do you ever see my country other than in the us it isn't as well ranked okay i see yeah i mean again i think i don't know it that's a tough question you know um i would do the best that you can if if you think you want to pursue a career in the us i think coming here for your bachelor's would be good but i also know a lot of people like a lot of my professors only did their phds here and their bachelor's like in their um home country and a lot of them are actually from columbia so you could definitely do that okay i'm just gonna answer a couple more questions because i just realized i've been here for way too long i um i have some things to do so um just gonna answer a few more questions and then we're gonna be leaving but thank you all in advance for joining um let me know if there's any days or times that you guys would prefer to have these live streams because today was kind of like spontaneous are there good future for biomedical engineers yes there is skills required for viewing which we have to learn as soon as possible um it depends on what you want to do there's a lot of skills you could gain um programming solid works learning about electrical engineering learning about mechanics learning about biology biocompatibility things like that it really depends on what you want to focus in but at the end of the day i think the best soft skill you can learn is communication and networking so those would be my top two speaking of local universities which are the best places to study being in mexico according to you think about going for tech since it's my dream school but ipn is just kind regarding engineering oh so are you from mexico that's really cool um i'm not sure unfortunately i do not know of a lot of universities in mexico i've also heard the is the ip and the poly technical yeah i think those are pretty good um i know there's the university in guadalajara that's really good and i actually know someone who teaches there um so if you're interested um i don't know if you guys follow me on instagram but if you don't you should message me and let me know um i would love to connect you with with um the person from guadalajara and maybe he'd know better if you know what are the best universities in mexico um but is a really big city i think it's like the number one and like technology in mexico so i think that would be a good place to go if not mexico city is obviously really good or maybe monterrey um but yeah those those are my opinions i guess alyssa would you recommend taking calculus 2 3 at a community college if your college that you're looking at applying to already has those classes but you want to just try them first to see how you do for less money yes i would definitely recommend taking your community i mean use whatever class you can at a community college i would just make sure that they're actually transferable because sometimes they're not and that would obviously be really bad but yes i would recommend taking any classes that you can at a community college okay brown said i'm thinking maybe on a friday or saturday if it's possible for you to do the live since we're ending our busy week on a friday where we have free time on both friday and our saturday it's all up to you we're always here supporting you thank you so much um yeah i i would i i agree that a week weekend day would be really good um i also like just kind of like tuning in during the week i think that'd be pretty cool i mean we've had so much engagement on a monday i'm really surprised but thank you all for being here and last question i'm going to answer is actually hit out of those i've seen too many questions but the real question here is how are you i'm pretty good thanks for asking um there's not really much going on in my life right now i think everything's pretty relaxing um i mentioned i work as an uh in a regulatory consulting firm today i actually shipped out my first submission which i've never done before i mean i worked in submissions before but today was my first time actually going to fedex and shipping something else so that was pretty cool um it just felt really nice to like actually ship out something physically i don't know that was exciting um but overall i'm pretty good um let's see i got a security system in my house or something so that's pretty that was pretty exciting and cool um other than that i'm thinking of getting a pet soon um don't want to say too much but yeah it's gonna be pretty cool and let's see well that's pretty much it you know um i went to mexico about two weeks ago and hopefully sometime in the summer we'll do some um traveling so that's gonna be exciting but i don't know i really don't know what's gonna happen um but yeah i'm good i'm really happy that everyone joined um it was great to see all these people i always um get nervous i guess thinking that no one's gonna join no one's gonna ask questions i'm just gonna be staring here actually my original idea was to answer the questions in the comments uh that i've gotten in the past but i actually didn't get to answer many questions from there because you guys were here and i'm obviously giving priority to the people that are tuning live uh so thank you all for joining it was a pleasure to chat with everyone and you know answer as best as i could again i'm not the most knowledgeable person i don't have all the answers but i can share my experience which is the purpose of this channel so anyway um i think that's it for today i will be ending the live stream now but thank you all for joining and stay tuned for the next one okay have a good rest of your monday everyone and we'll see you next time bye

Channel: The BME Life

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Id: -Yw2rSJPx-I

Length: 96min 58sec (5818 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021