Facts & Stats
Mission
Duke BME provides an outstanding educational and research environment to train engineers who go on to profoundly impact industry and medicine.
HISTORY
Since our founding as the Division of Biomedical Engineering in 1967, our faculty and students have been leaders in biomedical engineering research, education and innovation.
In 1972, our undergraduate BME program was the first accredited in the United States.
Today, BME is the second largest graduate program at Duke, the seventh-largest undergraduate major, and the largest undergraduate major in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.
Learn more about our history »
Rankings
- #4 undergraduate biomedical engineering program in the nation in U.S.News & World Report Best Colleges rankings
- #4 in the country in the 2019 U.S. News & World Report Graduate School Rankings
- #5 in world in ShanghaiRankings's global ranking of biomedical engineering programs (Academic Ranking of World Universities)
- #3 in the country for highest median starting salary for biomedical engineers—$70,000 (Medical Product Manufacturing News)
- Top 10 Best School for Engineering Majors by Salary Potential (Payscale.com)
- Pratt is listed in Top 10 Graduate Engineering Programs Popular with Women (U.S.News & World Report)
- Duke is #5 on Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education's College Rankings 2018
- Duke is #8 among US universities (U.S.News & World Report)
Duke bme at a Glance
- 34 tenured or tenure-track faculty, including:
- 21 AIMBE fellows
- 7 BMES fellows
- 4 SPIE and OSA fellows
- 4 Society for Biomaterials Clemson Award winners (since 2010)
- 2 Members, National Academy of Inventors
- 2 Members, National Academy of Engineering
- $32.7 million in new research awards—fiscal 2018
- 212 undergraduate students
- 96 BSE graduates in Class of 2018 (May graduates, BME first major only)
- 56 MS students
- 36 MEng students
- 186 PhD students
- 2 NIH pre-doctoral training grants: Medical Imaging (Nightingale, PI) and Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering (Gersbach, PI)
- 15+ companies launched by Duke BME faculty
Centers and Institutes
BME faculty participate in the following centers and institutes:
- Center for Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering (CBTE)
- Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics (FIP)
- Duke MEDx
- Duke Cancer Institute (DCI)
- Duke Center for Genomic and Computational Biology
- Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI)
- Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS)
- Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization (CERC)
- Center for Global Women's Health Technologies
- Center for the Study of Neurodevelopment and Improving Children’s Health Following Environmental Tobacco Smoke Exposure (NiCHES)