A Typical 3 Semester Course Sequence   

First Fall Semester (maximum of 15 credits):

  • [Required]: BIOENG 2150 - Medical Product Ideation
  • [Required]: BIOENG 2152: Medical Product Prototyping Foundations Lab
  • [Required]: BIOENG 2024: Bioengineering Seminar for Professional MS
  • [Elective]: BIOENG 2167 - Managing Medical Product Innovation
  • [Elective]: BIOENG 2351 - Biosignal Acquisition and Analysis
  • [Elective]: Graduate Engineering Mathematics or Statistics Course
  • [Elective]: Advanced Graduate Engineering Course
  • [Optional]: Business/Law Course

Spring Semester (maximum of 15 credits):

  • [Required]: BIOENG 2151 - Medical Product Development
  • [Required Hands-on]: BIOENG 2170 - Clinical Bioengineering
  • [Required]: BIOENG 2024: Bioengineering Seminar for Professional MS
  • [Elective]: BIOENG 2173 - Medical Design for Low Resource Environments
  • [Elective]: BIOENG 2175 - Human Factors Engineering in Medical Devices
  • [Elective]: Advanced Graduate Engineering Course

Summer Semester:

  • Ideal time for full-time students to complete their full-time internship (paid, unpaid, or for credit) with an industry partner or related entity, including in an academic R&D lab working with industry on product development.

Second Fall Semester (maximum of 15 credits):

  • [Required]: BIOENG 2171 - Medical Product Prototyping
  • [Required] BIOENG 2241: Societal, Political, and Ethical Issues in Biotechnology
  • [Required]: BIOENG 2024: Bioengineering Seminar for Professional MS
  • [Elective]: BIOENG 2230 - Cardiovascular Organ Replacement
  • [Elective]: Advanced Graduate Engineering Course
  • [Elective]: Advanced Graduate Engineering Course
  • [Optional]: Business/Law Course 

About the MS-MPE Program

A coherent 30 credit program of study is designed to assure mastery of specific knowledge and skills, rather than a random accumulation of a specified number of courses. Each student in the program will be primarily advised by the Director of the Professional MS Programs. They will be encouraged to select and also work with a project advisor to guide the student's individualized educational experience and desired outcomes post-graduation in their selected area of focus.

A thorough grounding in the principles of medical device innovation and development is provided through a three-semester sequence that starts with immersion in the medical/hospital environment to understand and identify unmet clinical needs, and ends with a working prototype to address the selected unmet need, with considerations of ethics, design principles (analysis and synthesis), product development, intellectual property, manufacturing , quality assurance, regulatory affairs and clinical.

In the MS-MPE program, business-oriented topics such as customer discovery and market analysis, financials including projections and reimbursement, organization and team building, project financing, entrepreneurship and career development will be covered. Some students may elect to gain further knowledge and skills in these areas by pursuing the joint MS-MPE and MBA degrees, the latter through the Katz School of Business at Pitt.