Why choose this program?

Interested on working a full-year on a biomedical engineering research project of your choice?

Biomedical engineering is an exciting and constantly evolving field trying to answer challenging questions in healthcare and support clinicians in their decision-making. To cope with this challenge requires progress in fields such as medicine, biology, engineering, physics, information technologies, applied mathematics, to name only a few. Biomedical engineering is the interface that integrates these fields to jointly solve a given problem, with most interesting tasks strongly involving research and innovation. 

The field of biomedical engineering offers a huge variety of interesting topics to work on, differently weighting technological, medical and biological concepts depending on the application. However, something in common in most interesting biomedical engineering projects nowadays is the relevant role of computational tools for data processing, interpretation, integration, modelling and visualization, to name a few. Examples of these computational tools include medical data analysis with classical image/signal processing or machine learning techniques, the different modelling phases involved in the development of medical devices, multi-scale computational models to simulate human organs and systems and for synthetic biology or advanced visualization techniques such as 3D printing and augmented/virtual reality interfaces, etc.; these can be used for biomarker extraction, improve diagnosis, guide minimally-invasive interventions, perform population-based statistics or give treatment recommendations in key clinical fields such as in neurology, cardiology or oncology, among others. 

This vast amount of possibilities defines the philosophy behind the CBEM MSc, empowering and giving flexibility to the student to choose and work on the research topic of her/his interest, with the academic team supporting and helping to find a student-tailored project to work during the whole year duration of the MSc.

Who is it for?

(Almost) Anyone interested on biomedical engineering research can enrol

The CBEM MSc is focused on excellent research in biomedical engineering, which can easily be misinterpreted if not properly explained and discourage potential interested students. As a few clarifying points, the CBEM MSc:

• is not only for biomedical engineering graduates: biomedical engineering graduates from any national and international university, including UPF, should find the CBEM MSc attractive if they are interested on learning advanced concepts on a given topic, putting them into practice in the research project for the MSc thesis; in parallel, other engineers and graduates from other scientific fields such as physics, mathematics or biology have successfully followed the CBEM MSc due to its flexibility and individualized projects, choosing elective courses to complement their current skills and are required for the selected research topic;
• is not only for students interested on pursuing a PhD after the MSc: although half of the CBEM MSc alumni are currently pursuing PhDs in excellent national and international labs, including at UPF (PhD positions often offered after the MSc), the other half started their professional careers directly in industry, showing that the skills learned during the MSc were also useful and attractive to companies;
• is not only for full-time students with own economical support: the MSc allows part-time schemes (two years) so that students can combine it with other activities such as work in companies (potentially related to the MSc project). Additionally, every year there are several fellowships available for our MSc students such as the Fundación Carolina to support some of our students. They can also be potentially hired as research assistants in on-going projects of the investigators.