Message from Department Chair

Welcome to the Department of Bioengineering

Benjamin M. Wu, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Department of Bioengineering
5121 Engineering V
310-794-7094
benwu@seas.ucla.edu

These are exciting times to be a Bioengineer at UCLA.  Ranked among the Top Ten Bioengineering PhD programs by the prestigious National Research Council, UCLA Bioengineering is a thriving academic unit in the world-renowned UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering, which is ranked #7 among all engineering schools in the WORLD.  

Centrally located in the beautiful UCLA campus, our Department features prominent faculty who are internationally recognized for their outstanding contributions to research and education.  The pace of technological breakthroughs and the potential impact of these intellectual accomplishments are breathtaking.  Bioengineering is home to numerous faculty awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards (‘09, ‘10, ‘11), NSF CAREER Awards (‘07, ‘08, ’10), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (’11), Packard Fellowship (’11), Coulter Foundation Translational Research Awards (’07, ’10, ‘11), and Young Investigator Awards by DARPA (’11), ONR (’09, ‘12) and Army Research Office (’11).   The modern Bioengineering building is within 5 minutes walking distance to the top ranked UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, and enjoys dual citizenship as an Affiliate Department in the School of Medicine.   With an annual research budget of $1.2B, UCLA is a vibrant hub of multidisciplinary collaboration that features over 240 centers and institutes bridging all sciences, engineering, and medicine.  40 UCLA graduate programs, including Bioengineering, ranged into Top 10 in the prestigious National Research Council ranking.  This close proximity and connectivity to such extensive excellence creates a highly stimulating environment for bioengineering research and education, and the new $80 million Clinical Translational Science Institute serves as an ideal platform to translate engineering innovations into clinical reality

Bioengineering attracts the most competitive students, and our innovative curricula equip them with solid engineering fundamentals and problem solving skills that encourage lifelong learning.  The students perform world class research in laboratories in our Engineering school, Medical Center, and Science departments, and multi-million dollar research institutes - all within short walks from each other.  Our students are earning accolades and winning national competitions, most recently the NIH Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (BEBUT) Challenge.  Our graduates are highly recruited to the top graduate and professional programs, and challenging jobs in industry with high growth potential.   

Visitors can immediately sense the vibrant, cohesive spirit that fosters interdisciplinary research, which will be critical as bioengineers tackle problems in health care, energy, sustainability, and informatics.  Our continued accomplishments in an increasingly more competitive funding environment attest to the quality and impact of our research, and we will even become better!

We recently merged the campus-wide Biomedical Engineering Interdepartmental Program into our department to create a stream-line academic structure to unite the graduate and undergraduate programs under one cohesive unit.  Over the next few years, we will work deliberately with other campus units to recruit top tier faculty who complement our existing strengths as we establish centers of excellence in key focused areas. Through strategic fund raising through training grants, endowed fellowships, and large program projects.  The future is bright at UCLA Bioengineering!