MANHATTAN — The College of Engineering at Kansas State University, with 
recent approval from the Kansas Board of Regents, will add biomedical engineering as its 11th Bachelor of Science degree program.
Offered through the electrical and computer engineering department, the curriculum of 133 credit hours will be officially available in fall 2018.
Biomedical engineering applies engineering principles to design challenges faced by the medical and life science communities.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job outlook for biomedical engineers is projected to grow nationally by more than 20 percent from 2014 to 2024, with biomedical companies in the Midwest representing a significant portion of that growth.
“We will initially offer two different areas of emphasis, taking advantage of the strengths of our existing faculty and their research programs,” said Don Gruenbacher, department head of electrical and computer engineering. “These will be biomedical sensors and devices, and biomedical computation.”
The following electrical and computer engineering faculty members will bring their extensive biomedical engineering backgrounds to the program, as well as experience in teaching biomedical courses and serving as investigators on numerous biomedical research grants: Steve Warren, professor, and lead faculty member of the biomedical group and director of the Medical Component Design Lab; Punit Prakash, assistant professor, and director of the Biomedical Computing and Devices Lab; Caterina Scoglio, professor, and director of the Network Science and Engineering Group; and David Thompson, assistant professor, whose research includes brain-computer interfaces and medical devices.
“We are pleased and excited to add the biomedical engineering degree to our program offerings,” said Darren Dawson, dean of the College of Engineering. “As the largest engineering program in the state of Kansas, it is our continuous goal to ensure our educational product is relevant and at the forefront of society’s needs.”
The College of Engineering will seek accreditation by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET for the biomedical engineering program after the first graduates of the program have completed their degrees, which is the standard ABET process for accreditation of new programs.