The Columbia University Department of Biomedical Engineering was founded in January 2000. Our teaching and research programs cover three primary research and educational tracks:
Our BME faculty and students are equally divided over these three disciplines. We have 19 full-time faculty members with primary appointments in Biomedical Engineering, five adjunct faculty, and numerous affiliates. The Department occupies more than 50,000 square feet of space in the Morningside Heights and Health Sciences campuses. Since 1995, the number of undergraduate BME majors (combined juniors and seniors) has risen from 11 to 120 in 2006. This represents one-fifth of the total number of the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). We are currently the most popular engineering major at Columbia University. At the graduate level, we now have more than 90 M.S. and Ph.D. students with the number and quality of applications rising dramatically each year. The Department of Biomedical Engineering is one of the premier departments at Columbia and has consistently been ranked in the top 15 BME departments nationally in various recent surveys. The overall ranking of Columbia ranges from 6 to 8, thus providing motivation for the BME Department to continue its growth.
The Department of Biomedical Engineering has been materially assisted by extraordinary University funding and awards from the Whitaker Foundation. Extensive facilities include teaching and research laboratories that provide students with unusual access to contemporary research instruments specially selected for their relevance to biomedical engineering. An undergraduate wet laboratory devoted to biomechanics along with a cellular engineering and a biomedical imaging and data processing laboratory provide equipment normally reserved for advanced research and provide exceptional access to current practices in biomedical engineering and related sciences. Specific research facilities of the biomedical engineering faculty members are included with the faculty listings. These laboratories are supplemented by department-wide core facilities, including a tissue culture facility, a histology facility, a confocal microscope, an atomic force microscope, an epifluorescence microscope, a freezer room, and a machine shop.
Columbia is a private, nonsectarian university that offers a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional courses of study. Columbia is known for breaking down the walls that separate the ivory towers of academia from the rest of the world. As a vital, multicultural center of life, learning, and diversity of every kind–geographic, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic–Columbia stands alone. Students come from more than thirty countries and all fifty states. Males and females are about equally represented in the student populations, and well over 30 percent of the students at the University are Asian, Black, Hispanic, or Native American. Difference has a place at Columbia. We are proud that Columbia offers a surprising mix of intellectual Ivy League atmosphere and a small college sense of community nestled in and enriched by the diversity of New York City. Our Web site includes comprehensive information about teaching programs, facilities and admissions, faculty profiles, and research lab descriptions.
Morningside campus
Uptown campus (Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center)
See also: Campus Life (http://www.engineering.columbia.edu/bulletin/campus/)