I’ll second the recommendation for bioengineering, that’s exactly the field you’re describing.
However, you might find at the undergraduate level that you’d be better off studying something that will get you a very solid foundation in mathematics and computer programming, which are the languages bioengineering uses to represent and model the behavior of biological systems.
Being an interdisciplinary field, it’s critical to balance your time spent learning the various sciences to become an effective bioengineer. You need to have an understanding of very different areas of science such as cell biology and fluid mechanics, so you can integrate these ideas together in your research.
In my experience, students with a background in physics, mathematics, or chemistry actually do better in graduate level bioengineering courses than students whom studied bioengineering or life sciences as undergrads. The formerer were learning to solve complex problems and represent phenomena with mathematics while the bioengineers were memorizing facts and nomenclature in biology classes. Memorizing biological facts is much easier to pick up on your own when you need it, whereas math proficiency is a skill that must be developed over years of practice.
Many prominent professors of bioengineering actually have their degrees in the physical sciences, and taught themselves the relevant biology.
The most important advice I can give is to start doing research in your field of interest NOW. Even in high school, you can volunteer to work in a professors lab. Performing research is where the real education occurs, not in the classroom.
I feel like choosing employment by industry or field of interest is silly. I thought clinical coding would be a good career because I’m interested in encylopediac knowledge of medical stuff. Beware a career in clinical coding if you are interested in medical taxonomy academically. Clinical coding gets low pay, repetitive, automatable and ut’s a skill specific to hospitals so that limits your employment field.
Bioengineering looks like the right choice but, unfortunately, my only available options are either General Engineering or Biomedical Science. To illustrate how these courses are organized at undergraduate level, see this for Biomedical Science and this for General Engineering.
In my experience, students with a background in physics, mathematics, or chemistry actually do better in graduate level bioengineering courses than students whom studied bioengineering or life sciences as undergrads.
I think this should be emphasized. I did physics before electrical engineering in grad school and they were taught much differently.
My physics classes (and background math) taught how to figure out how to solve problems, while the engineering classes only taught specific algorithms for solving specific problems. My physics classmates ended up doing all sorts of different things because the knowledge generalizes pretty well. My EE classmates all seemed to be cargo cult engineering, and even a lot of the professors didn’t seem to know that there is a difference.
The general engineering looks best to me also because you can work on your own project, so you can choose one in your specific area of interest.
See if you you can talk the advisors into letting you custom tailor it to bioengineering by replacing some of the class requirements with biochemistry courses.
I’ll second the recommendation for bioengineering, that’s exactly the field you’re describing.
However, you might find at the undergraduate level that you’d be better off studying something that will get you a very solid foundation in mathematics and computer programming, which are the languages bioengineering uses to represent and model the behavior of biological systems.
Being an interdisciplinary field, it’s critical to balance your time spent learning the various sciences to become an effective bioengineer. You need to have an understanding of very different areas of science such as cell biology and fluid mechanics, so you can integrate these ideas together in your research.
In my experience, students with a background in physics, mathematics, or chemistry actually do better in graduate level bioengineering courses than students whom studied bioengineering or life sciences as undergrads. The formerer were learning to solve complex problems and represent phenomena with mathematics while the bioengineers were memorizing facts and nomenclature in biology classes. Memorizing biological facts is much easier to pick up on your own when you need it, whereas math proficiency is a skill that must be developed over years of practice.
Many prominent professors of bioengineering actually have their degrees in the physical sciences, and taught themselves the relevant biology.
The most important advice I can give is to start doing research in your field of interest NOW. Even in high school, you can volunteer to work in a professors lab. Performing research is where the real education occurs, not in the classroom.
I feel like choosing employment by industry or field of interest is silly. I thought clinical coding would be a good career because I’m interested in encylopediac knowledge of medical stuff. Beware a career in clinical coding if you are interested in medical taxonomy academically. Clinical coding gets low pay, repetitive, automatable and ut’s a skill specific to hospitals so that limits your employment field.
Bioengineering looks like the right choice but, unfortunately, my only available options are either General Engineering or Biomedical Science. To illustrate how these courses are organized at undergraduate level, see this for Biomedical Science and this for General Engineering.
I guess I should go with General Engineering.
I think this should be emphasized. I did physics before electrical engineering in grad school and they were taught much differently.
My physics classes (and background math) taught how to figure out how to solve problems, while the engineering classes only taught specific algorithms for solving specific problems. My physics classmates ended up doing all sorts of different things because the knowledge generalizes pretty well. My EE classmates all seemed to be cargo cult engineering, and even a lot of the professors didn’t seem to know that there is a difference.
The general engineering looks best to me also because you can work on your own project, so you can choose one in your specific area of interest.
See if you you can talk the advisors into letting you custom tailor it to bioengineering by replacing some of the class requirements with biochemistry courses.