<p>I have a wide array of medical device ideas that I want to create in the future, some being electrical and some chemical. I am unsure on which major to choose between chemical or electrical engineering. My entire purpose of attending college was to learn everything I can to make my ideas a reality. I don’t necessarily want to plan my education for employment but to start a company that researches and developments medical devices. My school does not offer a Biomedical Engineering degree. Which of the two will be more beneficial in teaching me to create medical devices? </p>
<p>thank you for all comments and advice.</p>
<p>If you look at the faculty in a Biomedical Engineering Department, you will find those who have degrees in Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and even Physics. Since BME is quite interdisciplinary and a relatively new field, people can come into it from lots of different starting points. The best thing for you is to ask yourself which degree is most interesting to you as a field. Look at the course requirements and decide what would be most valuable to your career goals. You might find it is neither of the two you mention but something like Applied/Engineering Physics.</p>
<p>What about applied physics would be beneficial? The reason I leaned more towards engineering is it teaches you a better process to create products. I actually have briefly considered a degree in physics but didn’t think it would be beneficial to learning to create.
We don’t have applied physics just BS or BA in Physics. What are your opinions?</p>
<p>Thank you</p>
<p>Well, as a professional physicist and a faculty advisor for physics majors for a long time, I think that a physics major is an excellent way to know about a variety of fields, each of which is covered by an engineering discipline. A experimental physicist has to design new equipment to do new experiments and that involves a lot of engineering skills that often are picked up on the job. I like to say that to get into the new field of mechatronics a physics degree is ideal. The biggest problem for someone with a physics degree in getting a job with a B.S. is to convince the potential employer that she/he can do the job without the specific detailed courses from an engineering curriculum. There are some employers who are open to this but many are not. </p>
<p>However, from your description, you are not interested in just getting a job as an engineer but working on your own, perhaps after a graduate degree in Biomedical Engineering. Physics could be a good place to start. Physics degrees often have more free electives than Engineering degrees and this would permit you to take courses in Biology or Engineering that could serve to further your career objectives. in an Engineering degree, say EE, it is hard to find free electives to take a statistical mechanics or quantum mechanics course.</p>
<p>Xrayman makes a lot of good points and being a faculty adviser at a tech school, you should take his/her thoughts and suggestions seriously.</p>
<p>My D is a BME major. At her school, students choose a specialization within BME: biomechanics, biomaterials / tissue, or bioinstrumentation. All BME majors at her school start off with the general engineering requirements of math, chem, physics, stats, bio, etc. During their sophomore year they take some BME courses needed for all areas of specialization and then start taking courses within their specialization area. These specializations have some overlap with Mech E, Chem E, and EE respectively. All this to say that I don’t think you can really go wrong as long as you take electives that are oriented toward BME.</p>