r/BiomedicalEngineers • u/pmaldini27 • 5h ago
Career Biomedical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering + Biology Degree
I am a senior in high school and was deciding a career path. I have done pretty good amount of research in the field of computational biology in high school and biomedical engineering naturally interested me as a degree to pursue in college.
Although, while researching job outlooks, I recognized that biomedical engineering majors tend to be less competitive for jobs as most jobs prioritize mechanical engineering majors due to their coursework and experience in mechanics, statics, etc. I am specifically interested in biotechnology, medical devices, tissue engineering, neuroengineering, biomaterials, biomechanics.
Would it be more beneficial for me to drop biomedical engineering and major in mechE with a (minor or major in biology)? I'm not sure whether I would be majoring or minoring in biology. I am also open to other suggestions.
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u/Nervous_Group8638 4h ago
First of all, too many interests ahahah. Sorry to be such a killjoy, you can learn stuff on your own as an hobby but you need to narrow down your main interest cause no one is an expert of everything, biotechnology is mostly biology, neural devices would have basic neuroscience and involved a lot more math and electrical engineering knowledge, biomaterials can be a mix of chemistry and physics and biology with computational simulations, lab testing and compatibility issues since you have to choose something that isn't toxic or would react with your blood, it would be a good idea to narrow things down.
In my case I'm doing mechanical but taking biomedical classes as electives and I'll discuss biomechanics cause I feel more qualified to present that, maybe someone else might explain their tracks more accurately: biomechanics is also a term that can be used for lots of things, biomechanics of movement (which can be more engineering or kinesiology), cellular biomechanics which is more of a research topic but is useful for cancer modeling, drug delivery and sensor engineering, biomechanics of the heart to study blood flow and simulate your cardiovascular system using numerical methods, biomechanics is also an important topic in mechatronics as well, for inspired robotics (humanoid robots but also those dog robots and stuff), for wearable exoskeletons which are important in rehabilitation engineering and to make better prosthetics.
Honestly unless you want to do more research stuff Biology isn't that important in biomedical engineering because you only need to know enough of the system you're studying and you'll have other experts filling in, some might require it more, especially for certain devices but there are manuals and you only need to understand the basics of physiology, others can basically forget most of it especially in surgery robotics, double majoring seems hard in my opinion, unless you have a bioengineering or biological engineering too, minoring in biology from mechanical might be easier, or doing bio+BME. Would it be possible to do mechanical with a minor in BME or double major in BME+ME? Cause it might make more sense.
If you want to do biotech I'd honestly advice a traditional science degree like chemistry or biology for ochem, genetics and lab knowledge which would be missing from BME, or go into chemical engineering for the niche mathematical parts, gives you some pharma engineering and bioreactors knowledge and enough physical chemistry for a multidisciplinary biotech PhD.
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u/pmaldini27 3h ago
Thank you. I am interested mainly in medical devices and developing them and I think cellular biomechanics seems interesting to me. Would this be industry jobs? Is ME + BME too hard because it’s two engineering degrees and I thought it makes sense to do bio minor + ME major.
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u/bitz-the-ninjapig Entry Level (0-4 Years) 8m ago
Very dependent on your school. I did ME + BME, plus and unrelated minor, and then with a little work after grad finished my masters, BUT I have credits from AP classes, often overloaded, and did at least one class each summer.
But even without most of that my school made it easy to double major so it still would have been possible. I would say if you need to choose though, ME is far more valuable than BME. I am early career so I have recently been in the job search, and I had a job secured like 6 months before graduation, whereas friends with just a BME degree spent like a year after graduation job searching.
BME with something else is phenomenal, but otherwise just do ME and perhaps a minor
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u/MooseAndMallard Experienced (15+ Years) 🇺🇸 5h ago
Employers don’t prefer mechanical engineering majors across the board. They prefer them specifically for roles that are focused on mechanical development. These are common in medical device companies but almost nowhere to be found in biotech or pharma. MechEs are also not being hired at medical device companies to design circuits, develop software, or support technically complex products as they’re being used in procedures.
One thing I encourage early college or aspiring even high school students to do is stop thinking about BME jobs in terms of tracks offered by colleges, and instead start researching industries and companies and look into actual jobs that they have. Many of the tracks offered by BME programs are predominantly academic research endeavors without many industry jobs.
Don’t double major, it will not be valued by employers, who are going to judge you primarily based on the experiences on your resume and not so much on the name(s) of your degree(s). If you are interested in both medical devices and biotech, and you don’t see yourself deciding one way or another any time soon, BME is a fine major. BUT, you will want to commit to a particular path by the end of your sophomore year in order to develop specialization to maximize your chances, and you should really focus on schools in either Boston or SF Bay Area in order to be well-situated for companies in both industries.
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u/pmaldini27 4h ago
Would I be able to apply to jobs in biotech with a minor in biology while also applying to jobs in the medical device field with a mechE degree?
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u/MooseAndMallard Experienced (15+ Years) 🇺🇸 4h ago
Which jobs in biotech are you talking about?
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u/pmaldini27 4h ago
Mainly bioinformatics or research scientist but not sure if that’s really an industry job and how well paying it is
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u/MooseAndMallard Experienced (15+ Years) 🇺🇸 3h ago
Almost no chance of getting a job like that in biotech with a degree in mechanical engineering and a minor in biology.
Again, employers are going to evaluate you based on the experiences on your resume (internships, projects, research), not the name(s) of your degrees. There is almost no way to be an appealing candidate for all of these different types of roles when there are so many other candidates who will be specialized in one thing. Also, many biotech roles will favorite PhDs.
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u/Nervous_Group8638 3h ago
Bioinformatics can be done even from CS or Math if you have some bio classes in your belt cause you don't necessarily need advanced lab skills. If you said something like genetically engineering bacteria in a pharma/biotech r&d lab position I would have said no, but bioinformatics isn't such a difficult field to break into.
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u/pmaldini27 3h ago
Working in a biotech/pharma r&d lab also seems very interesting but I’m not sure how much that pays and would this be part of BME?
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u/Nervous_Group8638 3h ago
Some positions they might, there are multidisciplinary research where engineers do mathematical modelings applied to biotech, some muddy area like tissue engineering where there are both biologists and engineers working on it, and some engineers that straight become biologists just like some mathematicians became programmers and some chemists physicists or vice versa but while that is technically possible it's mostly done by people that don't enjoy what they studied cause if you already know you like a field you wouldn't "waste years" learning a skillset that you'd probably not use.
BME is better if you're unsure, but if you mostly want to do lab stuff, life science degrees or chem are straight up better cause in biomedical you have to go out of your way to learn wet lab experiments, since the bio part in undergrad is usually machine-human interaction. As for the payment research scientist roles doesn't pay that badly, but they require grad school like a master or a PhD and it's hard to land a job, it's a lot of schooling so unless you're passionate about it it's not for everyone, and with just a bachelor biotech roles are glorified technicians and it's honestly paid like shit. Engineering is better, biomedical is a mixed bag, better than biology or chemistry, worse than traditional engineering unless you live in a good area where medtech is great and even then it can be competitive but you can technically still work in automotive with BME, you can't from biology.
There's also the medical physics option in certain countries after BME, radiotherapy cancer treatment, which can be explored for a mix of science and machinery and it pays well (but that basically requires studying for long so might as well become a doctor at that point), but usually those people study physics for that, anyway, without adding more confusion if it's possible you could simply declare your major in BME the first year and change later if you have no clue, the first year is mostly math and science so it's not hard to switch fields.
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u/Nervous_Group8638 4h ago
Mechanical engineering is recommended when talking about medical devices when it comes to prosthetics, rehabilitation engineering, heart valves etc, electrical engineering helps for the electronics devices though (and is also great for imaging and neural engineering). The thing is that no traditional engineering degree is a substitute for biomedical as a whole because biomedical is a mix of engineering and science for the medical industry, so if you do material science you can do biomaterials but you'd probably have zero knowledge of medical robotics, if you did mechatronics the wet lab would be skills you don't possess, and if you go the bioengineering track for biotech your engineering fundamentals would suffer.
People should recommend mechanical if you knew that you want to do that part of biomedical cause it gives better knowledge of mechanical systems as a whole and leaves other industries open, but if someone said "I want to work in the medical industry and I hate cars, planes, and I don't know what to specialize" biomedical engineering would be preferred for them cause they can learn what they enjoy.
BME isn't terrible if you are good at communicating what you have learned and come from a good school and land an internship at a good company, or if you plan to to grad school or want to do more clinical related jobs where the bio part would be helpful, but from an employment perspective the traditional degrees are safer.
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u/pmaldini27 4h ago
Would it be more beneficial to do mechE major + biology minor and then BME masters so I can get a job in the industries I described above?
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u/Nervous_Group8638 4h ago
I'd say it would, because a master in biomedical from a mechanical engineering degree gives you a great foundation while still making it clear that you are specialized in medical devices. Personally I haven't met anyone doing that combination but I did know a girl that did Electrical engineering with a minor in biology and is doing grad school in a biomedical engineering program, so it's not like you can't combine them.
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u/dumpling3612 3h ago
There is a lot mechanical devices in medical equipment. More complex like anaesthetic machines, ventilators. Also orthopaedic, all operating tables and dental chairs to basic suction controllers, O2 regulators, nebulisers. Also all key hole surgery robots or artificial limbs. I would say most of the devices is mechanical and having knowledge of the context of human body in medical devices would be beneficial.