Biomedical engineering is currently the fastest growing field of engineering  in the U. S. and requires an education that draws from advanced engineering and computing as well as the biological and medical sciences.  NJIT offers an extremely flexible Masters program that encourages students to contribute to an individualized plan of study that builds upon the strengths of their B.S. and develop expertise in an area of concentration leading to careers in research and/or product development, or to prepare for further study in medicine, dentistry, law, and management. Major areas in which NJIT offers courses and conducts research are bioinstrumentation, biomaterials and tissue engineering, biomechanics, neural engineering and rehabilitation engineering.

The M.S. in Biomedical Engineering program at NJIT currently has one of the top five enrollments among biomedical engineering masters programs in the nation. This allows the department to offer a comprehensive set of courses specifically in biomedical engineering, which are augmented by related engineering courses taught in other departments. NJIT's location, in the middle of the nation's largest concentration of biomedical industries, provides access to expert instructors who offer specialized courses, which add to the richness of the academic environment. These industries also support graduate internships and thesis work, and often provide employment after graduation. The NJIT campus is within walking distance of both the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey flagship campus and Rutgers University-Newark. Graduate education at the three institutions is enhanced by collaboration agreements that allow cross-registration for courses, use of libraries, and opportunities for independent research. This benefits biomedical engineering by opening the possibilities for MS students to take advanced biological and medical science courses in addition to engineering courses.

The NJIT Department of Biomedical Engineering has a very active research program that is accessible to Masters students and provides opportunities for thesis or other independent study, which integrates engineering and the medical sciences. Research is conducted cooperatively between NJIT and the medical and dental schools of UMDNJ, the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, St. Barnabas Medical Center, Veteran's Administration Medical Center in East Orange, the Children's Specialized Hospital, the Public Health Research Institute, the Rutgers Center for Biological and Molecular Neuroscience and other institutions in the New Jersey-New York metropolitan area. In addition, cooperative research opportunities exist with a number of biomedical device and pharmaceutical companies within a short commuting distance from NJIT.

Aim of the Program

This program provides the opportunity for individuals with degrees in biomedical engineering to focus on a specialized area to a much greater degree than could be done in their undergraduate studies. Similarly, it also allows those with engineering and science backgrounds in other fields to acquire knowledge and skill that will allow them to join this growing field. The intentional flexibility in the selection of courses reflects the expected maturity of the graduate students as they assume significant responsibility for planning their concentrations. This flexibility also encourages students to exhibit some curiosity about unfamiliar areas of biomedical engineering and allows them to take two courses that may be peripheral to their academic focus.

The opportunity to pursue a thesis has the benefit of allowing students to choose a topic in which they will demonstrate the ability to integrate what they have learned, execute a 2-semester technical project, and communicate their results. Students not electing to pursue a thesis may choose three additional courses (replacing the 6-credit thesis) that increase their depth in engineering and breadth in the life sciences. A 3-credit MS Project may replace one of these three additional courses and provide some of the same experiences as the thesis.

Eligibility for the Program

Students who have a B. S. degree in science or engineering are eligible. All applicants must have had courses in scientific computer programming, differential equations, statistics, and physiology. Students who are missing one or more of these can be conditionally admitted with a requirement to take undergraduate bridge courses. Certain graduate courses or concentrations may require additional background, such as, statics and/or dynamics, thermodynamics, and electronics. Students who do not have these prerequisites may be asked to take additional courses or acquire the necessary material through tutoring and independent study. Prospective students may contact the MS Program Director for advice regarding their specific needs.

Course Offerings

The courses offered through this program allow students to choose concentrations that genuinely reflect their needs and interests. The sample course concentrations listed below reflect a curriculum that is rich in cutting edge engineering and science, and deep in its content. This critical mass of courses at NJIT, UMDNJ and Rutgers allows students to acquire a level of expertise that is uncommon among most biomedical engineering programs. The students in this program are nearly evenly split between those continuing their education  immediately following their BS and those who are returning to study after a number of years of employment. The same is true for the educational backgrounds of the students, with approximately half having studied biomedical engineering and the other half coming from different fields. Most candidates for the Masters degree enroll as full-time students. However, the degree can be completed on a part-time basis for those who wish to study while continuing to work. Most courses are offered in the late afternoon and in the evening.

In October 2005, the BME faculty voted to allow a non-thesis option. While the faculty believe that the thesis is very important, it also understands that many students (particularly those with experience in industry) may already have experienced the equivalent of an in-depth, year-long project, and can be better served by taking additional courses. Students who are entering the program directly from their BS studies, or are transitioning from a non-engineering field to biomedical engineering are strongly urged to choose the thesis option. Students considering a thesis are directed to the NJIT Library's web site where most recent theses are available online. Those who have questions about the scope and content of biomedical engineering theses should review several that fall within their areas of interest. These can be found at http://www.library.njit.edu/etd/list-majors.cfm?d=Biomedical-Engineering

Co-op Opportunities and Internships

Students have the opportunity to participate in the co-op and internship programs at neighboring medical institutions or at biomedical engineering firms to gain practical experience. NJIT is situated in an area that contains many major biomedical engineering and pharmaceutical companies. The biomedical engineering department has a part-time advisor for co-op and internship experiences.

Prospects for Employment

Considerable opportunity exists in the field of biomedical engineering. This takes the form of basic and applied research and product development. Employment may be found in medical institutes, government agencies, corporations and hospitals, all of which are involved in the design, manufacture and utilization of equipment and procedures intimately involved in health care improvement. Many students go on to obtain professional degrees in medicine, dentistry, law or administration for which an engineering background is becoming ever more important.

Admission Requirements:
Prospective students seeking admission to the Program must have an undergraduate degree in engineering, science or mathematics and satisfy the admission and academic requirements of the Graduate School.

1. General Guidelines:
    Each program of study must satisfy the Graduate School academic requirements (see the latest graduate catalog at www.njit.edu).
2. Prerequisite Courses
    Minimum Undergraduate Requirements for the Program: B.S. in Biomedical, Chemical, Electrical, Computer, or Mechanical Engineering. Applicants with a B.S. in Computer Science are expected to have had Calculus through differential equations, one full year of Physics, one full year of Chemistry, and a course in Physiology. Applicants with strong life science or medical education, including the equivalent of one full year of Physics as well as Calculus through differential equations, will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Conditional admission may be granted to applicants lacking full preparation with a requirement to take undergraduate bridge courses that will not carry graduate credit.

Admitted students who have not previously taken an upper level physiology course will be required to take BME 669-Engineering Physiology or an equivalent course as one of their graduate courses.

Specific Program Requirements:

Thesis Option 30 Credits
Required Graduate Courses:
    21 credits    Seven graduate courses appropriate for Biomedical Engineering.
    3 credits      One graduate course in experimental design, biostatistics or clinical
                       studies.
    BME 701    Thesis (6 credits)
    BME 791    Graduate Seminar--required for two semesters (0 credits)

Non-Thesis Option
Required Graduate Courses:
30 credits    Ten graduate courses appropriate for Biomedical Engineering (may
                   include a 3-credit project)
3 credits      One graduate course in experimental design, biostatistics or
                    clinical studies.
BME 791    Graduate Seminar--required for two semesters (0 credits)

Program Options
The BME MS Program offers two options. The Thesis option requires a total of 30 credits including a 6-credit thesis. The Non-Thesis option requires a total of 33 credits which may include a 3-credit MS Project and 10 courses, or 11 courses without a project.

Area of Concentration:
Unlike many other programs in biomedical engineering, the NJIT M.S. Program does not require prescribed core courses. Students are given the responsibility of planning a concentration of a minimum of six (6) courses (18 credits) that define a concentration that meets their career goals and intellectual needs. Possible areas of concentrations include:

        Neural Engineering
        Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
        Biomechanics
        Bioinstrumentation
        Rehabilitation Engineering
        Biomedical Imaging

Concentrations can be combined into new cross-disciplinary areas or can be further specialized to focus on either research or product design.

Breadth Courses:
Students may enroll in two (2) graduate courses (6 credits) in areas outside of their concentration but appropriate for the M.S. in Biomedical Engineering. Alternatively, these two courses could be selected as additional courses within the concentration.

Life and/or Medical Science Courses:
Within the eight (8) courses (24 credits) of the Thesis Option of the eleven (11) courses (33 credits of the Non-Thesis Option described above, students are strongly encouraged to take at least one (1) course in an area of life or medical science that supports the concentration. Non-Thesis students may wish to take additional life or medical science courses. This emphasizes the important link between engineering and the biological and medical sciences and can include basic or clinical science courses at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Rutgers University-Newark, which are available to NJIT students via a cross-registration agreement.

Seminars:
MS students are required to register for the 0 credit graduate seminar in each of a minimum of two semesters. This is a non-additive credit (i. e. it does not count toward the 30 required credits), however participation in the seminar is required for graduation. Graduate seminars are offered weekly during the semesters and include guest speakers as well as NJIT graduate students. The Department also maintains lists of seminars in other departments and in neighboring institutions that are of interest to biomedical engineering. Part-time graduate students may request a waiver of this requirement.

Thesis Requirement:
The Thesis Option requires a six (6) credit thesis. Because biomedical engineering exists at the intersection of several traditional engineering and computing fields, and the biological and medical sciences, the thesis demonstrates the student's ability to define a problem, plan two semesters of independent work in an interdisciplinary environment, and execute a research and/or design that meets NJIT's standards for a Masters Thesis. The thesis document conforms to the format of the Office of Graduate Studies and is evaluated by a committee of three members, two of whom must be from the NJIT biomedical faculty. External members from industry, medicine or other universities are encouraged. An oral defense before the committee and the departmental community is also required. All NJIT theses are archived in the University Library and are available via the Library's web site.

Thesis topics are selected by the student in consultation with faculty and other potential advisors. Thesis content can include a research study, the development/design of new technology including software, or the design, execution and evaluation of an experiment. A thesis may be conducted in an NJIT laboratory or in another institutional or industrial facility. The individual nature of the work must be clearly identifiable, as should its novelty and importance to biomedical engineering.

In cases where the intellectual property of an industrial sponsor may be in conflict with the public presentation of the thesis or its availability through the NJIT Library, special arrangements can be made by the MS Program Director to protect the firm's property.

Planning of Courses:
Students are responsible for identifying their area of concentration and proposing a coherent collection of courses to the MS Program Director or other designated advisor. The Department maintains an  electronic list of graduate courses appropriate to biomedical engineering, which are offered at NJIT, UMDNJ and Rutgers-Newark on a semester by semester basis on the department web site. Course descriptions are available elsewhere in the catalog. Students are advised to continually review their selected set of courses, as there is generally some variability in the scheduling of established and new courses. The Program Director and/or other designated advisor will be available to assist in planning the course selection.

Sample clusters of courses are shown below for different areas of concentration. These clusters are intended to serve as examples of the flexibility students have in choosing a balanced set of courses to meet their educational objectives. They are not program requirements. Students may propose considerably altered clusters that better meet their academic needs. Courses marked with an * meet the requirement for a course in experimental design and statistics. Note: only the Thesis Option is shown. the Non-Thesis Option replaces the six-credit thesis with three additional courses (totaling 9 credits)

BME MS students are encouraged to consider appropriate courses offered by other NJIT departments as well as by departments at Rutgers-Newark and UMDNJ. Students are cautioned that such courses may have prerequisites and other enrollment restrictions, are advised to check with the appropriate department for clarification. The procedures for cross-registration at Rutgers-Newark and UMDNJ are explained elsewhere in this catalog.

Neural Engineering
           

Personal Concentration (Thesis Option 8 courses plus thesis)

The Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering offers advanced graduate education providing students with the skills necessary for careers in basic and applied research, as well as the intellectual foundation to provide leadership in academia and industry. This program will emphasize depth in both engineering and basic science, as well as the integration of interdisciplinary concepts to address complex problems.

The new program builds upon the collaboration that currently exists between faculty at NJIT and UMDNJ. The physical proximity of the two institutions facilitates access to courses, laboratories, libraries, and seminars, as well as blends scientific and clinical opportunities in education and research. In addition, the location of NJIT and UMDNJ in Newark promotes interaction with New Jersey's pharmaceutical and medical device industries and medical facilities.

Biomedical Engineering research at NJIT and UMDNJ is presently clustered in the following areas:
        Biomaterials
        Biosensors
        Biomechanics and Sensory-motor Control of Human Motion
        Biomedical Signal Processing and Instrumentation
        Computational Biomedical Engineering
        Neural Engineering

The proposed Ph.D. program requires 60 credits beyond the M.S. degree in bioengineering or a related field. Of these, 24 credits must be in graduate level courses and 36 credits in dissertation research. The student will be required to successfully complete a comprehensive examination demonstrating depth and breadth of understanding in engineering and basic medical science necessary to pursue scholarly research and to make an important contribution in the area. A written and oral presentation of a dissertation proposal will also be required which identifies a problem, provides a critical review of related literature, proposes an appropriate hypothesis and presents a rigorous methodology that addresses the problem. A final oral dissertation defense will complete the process.

Highly qualified students may be admitted directly to the Ph.D. program following their B.S. degree. They will be required to complete a total of 78 credits of which 36 credits will be dissertation and 42 credits will be course credits.

Application to this program may be made to either NJIT or UMDNJ. A joint Admissions Committee comprised of faculty from both institutions recommends admission. Funding decisions are made by the Program Steering Committee. (Please note that this procedure differs from the MS Program).

Curriculum:
A student,  upon admission to the program, will choose one of the following six areas of specialization. Each area will have an entry-level course and a sequence of advanced courses.
        Biomaterials - orthopedic implants, dental materials, tissue engineering.
        Biosensors   - DNA chips, bioMEMS technology.
        Biomechanics and Sensory-motor Control of Human Motion - sensory integration,                neuromuscular control, human gait analysis, rehabilitation engineering.
        Biomedical Signal Processing and Instrumentation - cardiac dynamics, medical
              imaging, medical image processing.
        Computational Biomedical Engineering - modeling of physiological systems,
             bioinformatics.
        Neural Engineering - neural plasticity, neural growth, neural signal processing.

The academic Progress Committee, comprised of NJIT and UMDNJ faculty, monitors the progress of students in the completion of their degrees.

Course requirements include the following:
A student entering with a Masters degree is required to complete 24 course credits and 36 credits of doctoral dissertation. A student entering without a master's degree is required to complete 42 course credits and 36 credits of doctoral dissertation.

All students must complete. In addition, all students must complete at least 12 of the 24 course credits at the 700-level of which 8 credits are the UMDNJ core course in molecular and cellular biology, and 3 credits are in laboratory rotation. Within the student's major area of specialization, all students must complete at least 12 credits at the 600 and 700 levels. The student must also complete the entry-level course in another (minor) area chosen from among the five areas of specialization and 3 credits in research methods and practices in Biomedical Engineering.

Since students may enter the doctoral program with a variety of academic backgrounds, the admissions committee and/or the student's advisor may require additional courses beyond the 24 credits (42 credits for those without a master's degree).

Qualifying Examination:
Before becoming a doctoral candidate, a student must demonstrate his/her ability to integrate the knowledge acquired in earlier studies. These examinations will include a written examination in the students's chosen area, demonstrating depth and breadth of understanding in engineering and basic medical science necessary to pursue scholarly research. There will also be an examination in a second area, which is not the student's major area. This will assure breadth in biomedical engineering. An oral examination will also be required.

Dissertation:
The dissertation represents an original research contribution, and reflects a student's ability to critically understand the significance of a problem and conduct novel, high quality, and independent research, which advances the state of the art.

Before beginning the dissertation, the student will present a dissertation proposal, in both written and oral form. the proposal will identify a unique scholarly problem, provide a critical review of related literature, propose an appropriate hypothesis, and present a methodology to address the problem.

The dissertation will conclude with a written dissertation and an oral defense. All students must complete 36 credits of dissertation research.

Graduate Courses

The following is a list of graduate courses that are appropriate for students in the BME MS and Ph.D. programs.

Key to abbreviations: BME-Biomedical Engineering, BIOL-Biology at NJIT, CHE-Chemical Engineering, CIS-Computer and Information Science, ECE-Electrical and Computer Engineering, IE-Industrial Engineering, MATH-Mathematical Sciences, ME-Mechanical Engineering, MTSE-Materials Science and Engineering, OPSE-Optical Sciences and Engineering, PHEN-Pharmaceutical Engineering.

Courses offered by the Department of Biomedical Engineering (generally offered once each academic year-please see the department web site for details).

The following courses from other graduate programs may be appropriate for BME students when forming a cluster of related courses. Please note that many of these courses have prerequisites that will determine the possibility of registration. The time schedule and availability of these courses is found at the NJIT Registrar's web site: http://www.njit.edu/v2/Directory/Admin/Registrar/Courses.

Courses at UMDNJ Graduatae School of Biomedical of Biomedical Sciences
http://www.umdnj.edu/gsbsnweb/descriptions.htm

Courses at Rutgers Institute on Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience
http://ins.rutgers.edu/html/course_description.html

Courses the Rutgers-NJIT Federated Department of Biological Sciences
http://newarkbiosci.rutgers.edu/graduate.htm

Courses at UMDNJ in the School of Health-Related Professions-Biomedical Informatics
http://coursecatalog.umdnj.edu/shrp/byprogram.asp?mnuProgram=BIOMEDICAL+INFORMATICS+-+MS&Submit2=Submit

Courses at UMDNJ in the School of Health-Related Professions-Physical Therapy
http://coursecatalog.umdnj.edu/shrp/byprogram.asp?mnuProgram=PHYSICAL+THERAPY+%28ENTRY+LEVEL%29+-+DPT&Submit2=Submit