Designed to acquaint students with concepts of stress, strain, and constitutive laws as applied to problems in biomechanics. Introduces rigid body and deformable body mechanics. Focuses on basic foundations of solid mechanics using vectors and tensors. Illustrative examples from tissue and cell biomechanics are given where appropriate.

MATH

PHYS

BIOE

Biomechanics

Introduces engineering and science students to core knowledge and understanding of physiological systems and processes. Focuses on quantitative analysis of human physiological systems. Topics include the physical and chemical foundations of physiology; coupled forces and flows; electrical, mechanical, and chemical potentials and their conjugated fluxes; and the physiology of excitable tissue. Examines cell structure, function, and homeostasis with a particular focus on membrane transport, osmotic pressure, cell signaling, and cellular energetics.

Quantitative Physiology for Bioengineers

Introduces the fundamentals of biomedical data acquisition and statistical analysis. Engineering statistics topics include descriptive statistics, probability distributions, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, and experiment design. Applies these statistical topics by analyzing data obtained from laboratory exercises in BIOE 2366. Laboratory exercise topics include cell culture, mechanical testing, modeling medical imaging data, 3D printing, and bioprinting. Emphasizes using MATLAB software to analyze data on the computer.

BIOL

ENGW

Bioengineering Measurement, Experimentation, and Statistics

Offers associated laboratory exercises for BIOE 2365. Requires lab reports from all students.

Lab for BIOE 2365

Discusses principles of circuits, signals, and systems in the context of operating principles of bioelectrical systems at multiple physiological scales. Offers students an opportunity to obtain the fundamental background required to interface biological systems with circuits and sensors for measurements. Covers fundamentals of structure and function of electrically active tissue including nerves, brain, and muscle, including heart.

Bioelectricity

Covers the fundamental principles of processes and systems in which mass, energy, and momentum are transported in typical biological problems. Emphasizes momentum transport for incompressible and compressible fluids (fluid flow) and energy transport. The methods taught are relevant to the analysis of physiological systems, processing, and separation of biological materials.

Transport and Fluids for Bioengineers

Focuses on the principles of thermodynamics and kinetics applied to the analysis and design of biomolecular systems. Covers foundational topics—such as mass and energy balances, chemical equilibria, and enzyme kinetics—in a biological context. Introduces the role of feedback and feed-forward control in biomolecular networks, emphasizing basic analytical and computational methods, including the use of MATLAB, for analyzing how these regulatory structures affect the dynamics of small-scale, prototypical networks.

Biomolecular Dynamics and Control

Offers advanced bioengineering laboratory exercises with emphasis on techniques central to molecular, cellular, and tissue engineering. Laboratory exercise topics include PCR and qPCR, protein chemistry, bioconjugation, enzyme kinetics and enzyme-substrate interactions, polymers, surface modification, 3D bioprinting, fluorescence microscopy, and image analysis. Students build on previous courses by applying experimental design concepts, including sample size selection for statistical power, repeats vs. replicates, experimental treatments and groupings for ANOVA and mixed model analysis, and designing a robust standard curve, to research questions. Students apply MATLAB, microscopy imaging software, and molecular visualization and docking software to analyze experimental data. Requires in-class participation and written lab assignments and reports from all students.

Experimental Laboratory Methods

Offers the first in a two-course sequence of capstone design. Introduces principles of engineering design and applies them to the design of bioengineered devices. Topics consist of ethics, cost engineering, research methods, intellectual property, technical report writing, and FDA design control—including inputs, outputs, verification, validation, and design history files. Students are formed into teams and paired with a faculty advisor and supporter. Project support can be departmental, industrial, or external. Students defend a preliminary design project proposal in written and oral form before a faculty jury.

Capstone Design 1

Continues BIOE 4790. Offers students an opportunity to apply design principles to create a device or process to solve a relevant bioengineering problem. Teams develop, construct, and evaluate prototypes under real-world fiscal, regulatory, and safety conditions. Progress is monitored through a series of oral presentations in design gate review meetings. The design process is documented in a design history file that is reviewed throughout the course. Requires students to complete a working prototype or simulation, as appropriate, and a final written report.

Capstone Design 2

Offers an opportunity to conduct research under faculty supervision. May be repeated without limit.

Research

Offers theoretical or experimental work under the direction of members of the department under a chosen topic. Course content depends on instructor. May be repeated without limit.

Directed Study

Focuses on topics of timely interest to students of science and engineering. Topic varies from semester to semester. When appropriate, the course takes advantage of unique opportunities afforded by visiting faculty and guests. May be repeated once.

Special Topics in Bioengineering

Introduces the theoretical analysis and modeling of dynamical systems in biology, ranging from molecular to population applications. Topics include difference and differential equation models, with basic theory including nondimensionalization, steady states, linearization, stability, eigenvalues, global behavior, singular perturbations, multistability, hysteresis, cooperativity, periodic solutions, excitable systems, bifurcations; and an introduction to spatial (PDE) models. Develops all concepts in the context of concrete biological applications, such as gene regulation; chemical reaction networks and stoichiometry; drug models and PK/PD; receptor/ligand interactions; synthetic constructs; action potential generation; enzymatic reactions; population interactions; epidemiology; epigenetic phenomena, including differentiation and transport; chemotaxis; and diffusion.

Dynamical Systems in Biological Engineering

Presents the foundations of modern medical imaging, including imaging principles, imaging mathematics, imaging physics, and image-generation techniques. Includes X-ray, ultrasound, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging.

Biomedical Imaging

Covers engineering design challenges intrinsic to the development of biomedical devices, including clinical evaluation, manufacture, and testing of medical devices and the constraints that FDA regulations place on these processes. Topics include quality systems, design control, cybersecurity concerns, the role of standards in global device regulation, and the design process. Students are asked to form teams and to carry out a semester-long conceptual design project to develop a design overview, design plan, design input specifications, and verification test procedures for a novel medical device.

Design, Manufacture, and Evaluation of Medical Devices

Introduces the fundamentals of molecular structure and function that underpin engineering of biological macromolecules. Builds on this base with the application of design concepts for molecules and methods of structural and functional analyses and strategies for design and redesign of therapeutic molecules. Projects seek to provide students with experience in conceptual design to create strategies to address significant health concerns.

Molecular Bioengineering

Analyzes the techniques that form the foundation of molecular cell engineering, including recombinant DNA, cloning and genomics, prokaryotic and eukaryotic gene regulation and single-cell gene expression, structure, dynamics of gene regulatory networks, metabolism and cellular energetics, cell structure, cytoskeleton and cellular motors, synthetic gene circuits, and metabolic engineering.

Cellular Engineering

Applies the principles of biology and biomedical engineering to the creation of artificial organs for transplantation, basic research, or drug development. Requires integration of knowledge of organic chemistry, cell biology, genetics, mechanics, biomaterials, nanotechnology, and transport processes to create functional organs. Reviews basic cell culture techniques, structure function relationships, cellular communication, natural and artificial biomaterials, and the basic equations governing cell survival and tissue organization.

Principles and Applications of Tissue Engineering

Introduces the key roles that physical forces, the extracellular matrix, and cytoskeletal structure play in the development of human diseases. The cell is viewed as an engineering system that is capable of sensing physical cues from its environment, integrating such information from different mechano-sensors, and responding to changes in its external environment in a coherent manner. Uses mathematical and computational models to explain how cells sense and respond to physical cues.

The Cell as a Machine

Covers engineering principles and approaches in stem cell research and their application in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Emphasizes recent technology and engineering tools used to understand and manipulate stem cells. Topics covered include embryonic and adult stem cell biology fundamentals; quantitative modeling of stem cell signaling; genetic/biochemical/biophysical/biomechanical/biomaterials tools to control stem cell fate and differentiation; epigenetic editing and cellular reprogramming; engineering biomimetic and bioreactor environments to develop stem-cell-based therapies; and various applications in tissue development, diseases, and regeneration.

Stem Cell Engineering

Focuses on the translation and commercialization of bioengineering products and technology. Offers students an opportunity to gain essential entrepreneurship skills through studying and exercising the key elements and processes in establishing and launching a biotechnology startup. Examines how to assess bioengineering product and technology opportunities, evaluate the technology’s market potential, navigate the landscape of intellectual property protection and FDA regulation for bioengineering products, form a biotechnology startup company, write a business plan, and pitch startups to prospective investors. Covers fundamentals of engineering economics.

Bioengineering Products/Technology Commercialization

Analyzes biofluids and their mechanics, including cardiovascular fluid mechanics. Examples are taken from biotechnology processes and physiologic applications, including the cardiovascular, respiratory, ocular, renal, musculoskeletal, and gastrointestinal systems. Topics include dimensional analysis, particle kinematics in Eulerian and Lagrangian reference frames, constitutive equations and Newtonian/non-Newtonian biofluid models, flow and wave propagation in flexible tubes, and oscillatory and pulsatile flows.

Physiological Fluid Mechanics

Identifies and reviews the fundamental conservation principles that govern structural mechanics and fluid dynamics in biological systems. Discusses the following numerical analysis techniques: parameter estimation, finite difference, numerical integration, and finite element methods. By combining conservation laws with numerical analyses techniques, develops approaches to describe the physiological function of various biological systems, allowing for a system of equations to be used to describe a biological problem and solve this system numerically to predict its behavior.

Computational Biomechanics

Covers biomedical optics and discusses the theory and practice of biological and medical applications of lasers. Topics covered include fundamentals of light propagation in biological tissues; light-matter interactions such as elastic and inelastic scattering; fluorescence and phosphorescence; diagnostic imaging techniques such as confocal fluorescence microscopy, diffuse optical tomography, and optical coherence tomography; and therapeutic interventional techniques, including photodynamic therapy, laser thermal therapies, and fluorescence-guided surgeries. EECE 5648 and BIOE 5648 are cross-listed.

EECE

Biomedical Optics

Introduces experimental aspects of systems and synthetic bioengineering. Offers students an opportunity to learn how to plan and execute quantitative experiments, how to apply engineering principles to design laboratory research and to interpret data, and how to design and implement synthetic genetic or enzymatic circuits. Through team projects, explores techniques in nucleic acid, protein, and genetic engineering; quantitative measurements at the single-cell level and beyond; design and applications of synthetic circuits; and discusses ethical considerations.

Experimental Systems and Synthetic Bioengineering

Covers biopolymer conformations, cell membrane mechanics, chemical reaction kinetics and applications to polymerization and molecular motors, electric fields, and action potential propagation. Recent years have seen a tremendous growth in the use of ideas and methods from physical science and engineering to obtain a better understanding of biological phenomena and for applications of that understanding to societal needs, ranging from health to agriculture. Underlying these efforts are principles from statistical physics that establish the framework for this increasingly popular part of bioengineering.

Physical Bioengineering

Develops a set of statistical tools to address poorly posed inverse problems. Interpreting complex and partial information is a routine task in research as well as in our daily lives. Such tasks include estimating quantitative properties of a biological system from indirect noisy measurements, responding to fluctuating environmental signals, or breaking encrypted messages. Common to these diverse questions is a need to construct a predictive model from partial data. Draws on examples from primary literature in biology to study text recognition, trait mapping, sequence alignment, decoding cryptographs, processing of chemoattractive signals to find food, and survival strategies of bacteria in unpredictable environments.

Modeling and Inference in Bioengineering

Explores the concept of systems and transfer functions to allow engineers to break down a complex system into simpler systems and to combine simpler modules to form complex functions. Presents a set of analytical tools and focuses on applying frequency-domain analyses (e.g., Fourier, Laplace, and Z transforms) to simplify continuous and discrete-time systems and gain insights regarding their stability and frequency responses. Offers students an opportunity to understand, characterize, and combine analog and digital signals produced by electronic and biological circuits, as well as design controllers to achieve desired biosystem behavior. Using this knowledge, students design filters and controllers, both in the analog and digital forms, and measure and manipulate complex real-world bioengineering systems (including image processing for 2D signals).

Systems, Signals, and Controls for Bioengineers

Investigates the principles of biology and engineering underlying the design and use of biomedical instrumentation. Topics include design of a broad range of instrumentation and monitoring devices, sensors, and integrated systems. Graduate students interested in taking this course should have completed an equivalent introductory circuits course.

Design of Biomedical Instrumentation

Offers a broad overview of the field of biomaterials (materials used in medical devices that interact with living tissues). Introductory lectures cover biomaterials and their translation from the laboratory to the medical marketplace. Discusses important biomaterials terminology and concepts. Emphasizes material structure-property-function-testing relationships and discusses specific materials used in medical devices and drug delivery. Concludes with introductions to topics in the field, such as biomaterials-tissue interactions, tissue engineering, and regulatory requirements. Considers principles of device design as related to the selection and application of biomaterials.

Biomaterials

Uses an interdisciplinary approach to evaluate how a team designs medical implants to meet unmet clinical needs. Covers biomaterials, interfacial phenomena/surface science, phenomena/surface science, the lymphatic system, immune response, aging, mechanical factors, sterilization methods, and human factors. Presents exogenous factors, including intellectual property, regulatory requirements, affordability, product liability, and bioethics. The class is divided into teams that design proprietary medical devices using a unit processes/case study approach presented by experts with firsthand experience in meeting unmet market needs.

Design of Implants

Covers the field of biomedical data science. Teams of students undertake projects solicited from biomedical PIs in broad areas of biomedical research, using datasets and developing a project work plan. Studies how to estimate a patient’s state of health using their health data and to use modeling and machine learning methods to project that health state to make personalized predictions. Includes lectures on physiology, medicine, and engineering principles (probability, machine learning) relevant to each project; faculty mentors assist student projects with challenges. Requires project updates to the class at regular intervals so that teams gain experience with presenting.

Engineering Approaches to Precision Medicine I

Introduces students to the use of computational methods in studies of systems biology, computational bioengineering, and data science and their extended utilities in a wide variety of applications in science and engineering. Covers basic elements of numerical methods and algorithms for solving different types of differential equations, running simulations, and performing optimization and data analysis. Emphasizes the concept and principle of each algorithm and its usage in R programming in the context of real-world applications in systems biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, and data science.

Computational Methods in Systems Bioengineering

Covers the fundamentals of bioengineering research topics and methodology for master's-level bioengineering students. Internal and external speakers discuss general topics in bioengineering, including the medical device qualification and regulatory environment, tissue engineering, cell engineering, mechanobiology, drug delivery, bioimaging, neuromotor control, and effective design of experiments. Each student is expected to read, critically evaluate, and present research in a peer-reviewed bioengineering journal article.

Principles of Bioengineering

Designed to provide bioengineering students with a working knowledge of the integrated behavior of organs and systems in the human body. As such, the student is provided with a comprehensive and intense immersion in each physiological subsystem with the expectation that he or she display knowledge of each at the level equivalent to that of a second-year medical student following his or her exposure to physiology. The specific subsystems covered are muscle physiology, cardiovascular physiology with ECG interpretation, pulmonary physiology with gas exchange mechanics and ventilation/perfusion, renal physiology and water balance, regulation of pH, gastrointestinal physiology, temperature regulation and energy balance, endocrine systems, and reproductive systems. The course does not cover neurophysiology.

Medical Physiology

Offers an overview of quantitative techniques that students will encounter in their research, providing a language and a foundation for more specialized study. Introduces basic concepts from linear algebra, ordinary and partial differential equations, transforms, function approximation, probability, statistics, and numerical computation, illustrated by applications in biology and medicine.

Mathematical Methods in Bioengineering

Designed to introduce new graduate bioengineering students to the fundamentals of bioengineering research topics and methodology. Includes outside speakers to discuss general topics in bioengineering. Examples of course topics include the medical device qualification and regulatory environment, tissue engineering, cell engineering, mechanobiology, drug delivery, bioimaging, neuromotor control, effective design of experiments, writing research proposals for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and how to evaluate and write a peer-reviewed journal article, etc. Expects students to read, critically evaluate, and present the research in a bioengineering journal article. Students are then expected to extend their article into a hypothesis-driven proposal in NIH format with an oral defense of the proposal.

Presents topics of an advanced nature by staff, outside speakers, and students in the graduate program. This course must be attended every semester by all full-time graduate students. May be repeated without limit.

Seminar

Offers students an opportunity to practice clear and concise oral communication of research to an audience of people with a variety of skills and differing expertise. This is an essential skill for anyone seeking a career in scientific research and beyond. It differs from communicating research to a group meeting or a conference presentation, which is comprised of audiences of fellow specialists who are already familiar with the field and its specialized terminology. Students instead present to a diverse, interdisciplinary group of peers (i.e., the Department of Bioengineering and other members of the Northeastern community).

Student Seminar

Offers analytical and/or experimental work leading to a written report and a final short presentation by the end of the semester.

Master's Project

Offers theoretical or experimental work under individual faculty supervision. May be repeated for up to 16 total credits.

Independent Study

Offers students an opportunity to conduct full-time research under faculty supervision.

Offers analytical, research, and/or experimental work conducted under the auspices of the department. May be repeated once.

Thesis

Offers students an opportunity to prepare for the PhD qualifying exam under faculty supervision. Intended for students who have completed all required PhD course work and have not yet achieved PhD candidacy; students who have not completed all required PhD course work are not allowed to register for this course. May be repeated once.

Exam Preparation&#8212;Doctoral

Offers students an opportunity to conduct full-time research under faculty supervision. May be repeated without limit.

Offers theoretical and/or experimental work conducted under the auspices of the department.

Dissertation Term 1

Offers dissertation supervision by members of the department.

Dissertation Term 2

Offers continued dissertation work conducted under the supervision of a departmental faculty member.