Research opportunities for PhD students
Research is a cornerstone of the BME PhD program. Students are expected to select a research laboratory prior to their second year. Emphasis is placed on original research — leading to their doctoral dissertation.
All students are admitted with full fellowship that covers tuition, and provides a modest stipend for the duration of their PhD. Because students are fully funded, they can choose to perform their dissertation in essentially any laboratory in the University (subject to the approval of the program directors). A special program with the NIH Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) allows students to also choose from research laboratories at the NIH.
Students typically do research rotations during the summer before start of the first academic semester, during the first year (typically as they are taking medical school courses), and during the following summer year. They are expected to choose a research laboratory before the start of the second academic year.
Emphasis is placed on original research leading to the doctoral dissertation. The research is usually experimental in nature, and students are expected to learn biological experimental techniques; nevertheless, experiment or theory can be emphasized in the research as desired by the student.
Research and Training Areas
Browse through the research section for details about each of these exciting areas.
Cell and Tissue Engineering
Tissue engineering, one of the most exciting and rapidly growing areas in biomedical engineering, offers vast potential for changing traditional approaches to meeting many critical health care needs.
Computational Biology
- Bioinformatics
Biomedical research has been revolutionized by technologies that generate high throughput data. Research in bioinformatics is focused on representing and analyzing this informational data.- Computational Modeling
Hopkins biomedical engineering researchers draw on vast amounts of genetic and biochemical data. They combine knowledge of the human genome with the massive power of modern computers to construct realistic simulations of human organs.
Medical Imaging
The human body can be imaged in scales from a single molecule to the whole body. These images allow physicians not only to see what a patient's organs look like, but also how they are functioning — even at the smallest dimensions.
Molecular Neural Cardiovascular Systems (MNCS)
- Synopsis of MNCS Labs
View researchers and their publications.- Molecular and Cell Systems
The human body’s 100 trillion cells perform most fundamental life functions. Understanding how molecules interact to produce these functions is a central biological challenge that holds the key to designing effective treatments for combating disease.- Cardiovascular Systems
Cardiovascular disease poses a major health problem. Researchers from across the disciplines of physiology, biophysics, biomechanics, mathematics, systems identification and computer modeling work collaboratively on a number of cardiovascular research projects.
Neuroscience and Neuroengineering
The brain is perhaps the greatest and most complicated learning system and exercises control over virtually every aspect of behavior. Investigators in this area share a common desire to produce quantitative models of information coding and processing in neural systems.
