INTRODUCTION
Active biomedical researchers in a consortium of five
institutions
have collaborated in a National Science Foundation sponsored development
("Development of the New York Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE),"
Combined Research - Curriculum Development grant,
Engineering Education and Centers Division,
S.C. Cowin, PI)
of a first year graduate
core
curriculum in biomedical engineering. The curriculum has been organized
by
Center for Biomedical Engineering. The five
institutions
in the CBE consortium are the City College (CCNY) of the City University
of
New York (CUNY), the CUNY Medical School, the Hospital for Joint
Diseases
of the New York University School of Medicine (HJD), the Hospital for
Special Surgery (HSS) of the Cornell University Medical College (CUMC)
and
the Graduate School of CUMC. The core curriculum enables beginning
graduate
engineering students to take an organized ancillary program, beyond
their
own engineering specialty, in biomedical engineering, and it also
enables
graduate students to obtain the Ph.D. degree in a traditional engineering
discipline with biomedical emphasis. Five courses of an
interdisciplinary
and interinstitutional (based at the City College) core program on cell
and
tissue engineering have been developed. The five course set includes
cell
and tissue-material interaction, cell and tissue mechanics, cell and
tissue
transport, cell and tissue imaging and cell and tissue signal processing
and instrumentation. The research expertise of the biomedical
researchers
in the consortium lies in biomaterials, biomechanics, biotransport,
instrumentation, imaging and signal processing.
