| Major Code: 9058 |
Degree Awarded: Doctor of Philosophy |
| Delivery Mode(s): Classroom |
Admission Status: Graduate |
| Admission Materials: letters of recommendation, GRE, résumé/CV, objectives, transcripts |
Location(s): Main Campus - Melbourne |
The doctoral program is primarily for students who wish to develop independent research, problem-solving and critical thinking skills in a particular area of biomedical engineering. Research areas must be related to a faculty’s interests.
Admission Requirements
General admission requirements and the application process are presented under Graduate Academic Information .
The applicant will typically have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in biomedical engineering or its equivalent. Applicants with degrees in other fields of engineering, science or mathematics may be required to successfully complete preparatory undergraduate coursework before starting the program.
Applicants are expected to have performed very well academically, as determined through GPA and GRE scores.
Degree Requirements
General degree requirements are presented under Graduate Academic Information .
The degree of doctor of philosophy is conferred primarily in recognition of creative accomplishment and the ability to investigate scientific or engineering problems independently rather than for the completion of coursework. The program consists of advanced studies and research leading to a significant contribution to the knowledge of a particular problem.
A student’s research may have analytical, computational or experimental components or some combination of these. The student will choose an area of specialty for both coursework and research (biomechanics; biomedical instrumentation, imaging and computation; and biomaterials and tissue engineering). Each student is expected to complete an approved program of study beyond that required for a master’s degree, pass both written and oral components of the comprehensive examination, present a dissertation proposal acceptable to the student’s committee, complete a program of significant original research, and prepare and defend a dissertation detailing the research.
The program consists of a minimum of 42 semester credit hours of study beyond the master’s degree, of which at least 12 semester credit hours shall be for formal coursework. High-achieving students with bachelor’s degrees can also be admitted directly into the doctoral program, and require 72 semester credit hours of study, of which at least 24 hours shall be for formal coursework.
The minimum number of doctoral research and dissertation credits for students with master’s or bachelor’s degrees is 18 semester credit hours. Students must pass the comprehensive examination before registering for dissertation credit. All program plans are required to include the course requirements listed under the biomedical engineering master’s program description in this catalog. However, they can receive credit for some coursework completed as part of the master’s degree. All students are required to register for and attend the zero-credit Biomedical Engineering Seminar (BME 5900) every semester.
The timing of the comprehensive examination will typically correspond to when the student completed at least 12 credit hours of course work after the master’s degree (21 credit hours after the bachelor’s degree). Students must have at least a 3.2 grade point average to take the written examination. The comprehensive examination is to write and defend a grant proposal, with the goal of assessing the student’s background in biomedical engineering and critical thinking skills. The proposal should be on a different topic than the student’s dissertation. The grant proposal format and topic must be approved by all of the dissertation committee members and the program chair.
Upon successful completion of the comprehensive examination, a dissertation proposal must be submitted to the student’s advisory committee for evaluation. Once the proposed research is determined to be of doctoral quality and completion is feasible, the committee approves the student to advance to candidacy for the doctoral degree. Finally, the student must defend a dissertation.
