Quick Crash Course on Biomedical Engineering career pathways

Sincerely, back when I was thinking of choosing this career path, I thought there was only one job option I can get after graduating college. That one option being solely based on working with prosthetic devices. That was the reason why I choose this career. But I’m uncultured, and turns out there are other paths you can take! The pathways are: Regeneration, External prosthetics, Internal prosthetics, and Tissue engineering.

• Regeneration: As a BME you can work in a lab researching the properties that make regeneration possible so that in the future it can be applied to us. Did you know that the only organ we have that has the capacity to regenerate itself is the liver, and that bats have the ability to regrow holes in their wings? This is all due to regeneration.
• Tissue engineering: This is the newest way of thinking. Basically, you would be attempting to create complex systems like organs. It involves lots of research as well. A very mind blowing example of this is the Vacanti mouse!
• Prosthethics: There are actually two kinds of prosthetics. We have external and internal prosthetics. The main goal of prosthetics is to replace lost body parts. External prosthetics, as the name implies, is all focused on the devices outside the body. Inversely, internal prosthetics focus on devices inside the body. Due to that, you will use different materials to design them. Internal prosthetics use biomaterials, while external prosthetics can use stronger materials like steel.

As BMEs we have to be at least familiarized with many topics from many different fields, and stay up to date with them if we want to develop anything worth while. Heck, to an extent we even have to be good business people in order to promote potential products/research and make sure they don’t get bad press. In other words, we have to keep learning through out our life. I just think that is a beautiful thought. Knowledge is power, but through knowledge you also get to appreciate how complex everything truly is, and see the world from different perspectives. I mean, in the end, isn’t that just part of being an engineer?