2024-2025 Graduate & Professional Studies Catalog
Medical Product Engineering, MS-MPE
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The Master of Science in Bioengineering - Medical Product Engineering program is a non-thesis program of graduate education in Bioengineering aimed at current industry professionals and students desiring a career in the healthcare industry. The program will provide opportunities for students to acquire relevant business, advanced engineering, and technology skills such as entrepreneurship, product development, regulatory processes, and commercialization.
The University of Pittsburgh, through BioE and SSOE and in cooperation with SOHS and KGSB, is ideally positioned to offer a premier educational program in response to the strong regional interest and support for medical product innovation and product development. The Master of Science in Bioengineering - Medical Product Engineering degree will be awarded by SSOE and administered through the Department of Bioengineering.
Medical Product Engineering program will combine bio/medical engineering, hands-on product design, development, and commercialization. Working with practicing healthcare and biomedical professionals, student teams will be challenged to create new solutions addressing unmet clinical needs in diagnosis, treatment, surgery, hospital care, patient rehabilitation, or home healthcare environments.
The MS-MPE program will be attractive to students who want to pursue an advanced degree in Bioengineering, but who do not want to pursue a research-based MS or PhD degrees. Although the program is specifically directed toward undergraduate engineering students, individuals with strong, quantitative background in a STEM discipline are also eligible candidates. Qualified students in SOHS, KGSB, and Law and professionals currently working in the health care field who are seeking to complement their education with a graduate degree in Medical Product Engineering may be interested. In addition, the MS-MPE program could be of interest to undergraduate students pursuing the 5-year BS/MS program and it will satisfy the requirements for the joint MBA/MS program co-sponsored by the KGBS and SSOE.
Most of the special courses offered as part of the MS-MPE program are also available to all eligible Pitt students (graduate and undergraduate) as electives. These special courses are also available to Pitt students who are already enrolled in a graduate program and not prepared to complete the 30-credit MS-MPE program, but wish to obtain the 15-credit Graduate Certificate in Medical Product Innovation (C-MPI). The Graduate Certificate was approved by the Provost in 2012. A PRMS document for the Certificate program is on file with the Provost’s office.
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I. Five Required (Core) Courses: 15 credits
II. One Required Biomedical Ethics Course: 3 credits
Students will be expected to enroll in “Societal, Political, and Ethical Issues in Biotechnology” (BIOENG 2241 ), which is offered both semesters by the Department of Bioengineering. In the event of class conflict, students can enroll in a course offered by another department (e.g., Bioethics) with the approval of the graduate coordinator.
III. One Required Math/Stats Course: 3 credits (choose one course from the approved lists of graduate level math and statistics courses):
Approved Math Courses
Approved Statistics Courses
Another option that may be well-suited for MS-MPE students is:
Prerequisites: None
Description: This course is designed to teach you programming in the context of real-world tasks that you will likely encounter in future academic or industrial work.
IV. Elective Courses relevant to Medical Product Engineering curriculum (per approval by program director): 9 credits of Advanced Engineering/Science courses (12 credits if tested out of BIOENG 2152)
Students can take any program relevant 2000+ level courses as electives. Since program students can explore and examine all facets of the medical product engineering process from ideation to prototyping to clinical evaluation, the following list of elective courses, which have been offered one or more times since Fall 2011, are highly appropriate for graduate study in Medical Product Engineering.
V. One Rotation of Co-op/Internship: 0-3 credits
Minimum one rotation of individually arranged co-op/internship is highly recommended. The co-op/internship requirement is waived for students working full-time. As such, when students enter the MS-MPE program, the internship requirement is co-determined with the Program Director.
MS-MPE students can opt to earn 0-3 course credits toward degree requirements, which are a part of the 12 required elective credits. Thus, if a student earns less than 3 credits for the co-op/internship, electives much be taken to hit the required total 30 credits.
VI. BIOENG 2024 - Bioengineering Seminar for Professional MS: 0 credits
BIOENG 2024 is a required, zero-credit seminar focused on career development for students in the Professional MS program. It is required for 1 Fall and 1 Spring semester.
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