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Study and Research Opportunities
Bioengineering07.pdf
Program Objective
The UC Santa Cruz B.S. in Bioengineering program prepares graduates for a rewarding career at the interfaces between engineering, medicine, and biology. UCSC Bioengineering graduates will have a thorough grounding in the principles and practices of bioengineering and the scientific and mathematical principles upon which they are built; they will be prepared for further education (both formal and informal) and for productive employment in industry.
Admission to the Jack Baskin School of Engineering (SoE)
Freshman Applicants:Admission into an SoE major is based on high school grade point average, test scores, courses completed in mathematics and sciences, and the personal statement. Applicants who are not accepted into the major may apply for admission to the major after coming to UC Santa Cruz. Admission to the major as a UCSC student is based on grades in courses from engineering and the physical and biological sciences and the completion of lower-division requirements.
Transfer Applicants: The B.S. in bioengineering is a new program. Junior transfer applicants will first be admitted in winter 2008 for fall 2008 enrollment.
For transfer students, admission into the major is based on academic college record. Applicants are expected to take and excel in all courses that are equivalent to the department’s lower-division requirements (see Transfer Preparation section).
Please see the current UC Santa Cruz General Catalog online for a full description of the SoE admissions policy or visit www.soe.ucsc.edu/advising/undergraduate/prospective/ admission.html.
High School Preparation
High school students intending to apply to the bioengineering major should have completed at least four years of mathematics (through advanced algebra and trigonometry, and ideally including calculus) and three years of science, including one year each of chemistry, biology, and physics. Comparable college mathematics and science courses completed at other institutions may be accepted in place of high school preparation. Students without this preparation may be required to take additional courses to prepare themselves for the program. Students who are not well prepared to take calculus in their first quarter are strongly advised to take precalculus at a local community college the summer before coming to UCSC.
Transfer Preparation
The bioengineering program will be open to prospective transfer students starting fall 2008. The prerequisite structure for upper-division courses at UC Santa Cruz requires that many courses be taken sequentially. Because of this, it is necessary for prospective transfer students to have completed as many of the lower-division required courses as possible before transferring.
Transfer students should not follow the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) because it will not provide enough mathematics and science courses to allow them to complete the bioengineering program in two years. Most students find it easier to spread the general education requirements out over four years.
Transfer admission will be based on GPA and the level of completion of lower-division requirements. Most importantly, transfer students should have completed articulated calculus, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations, as well as at least three of the four other introductory areas (biology, chemistry, physics, and computing). Students may satisfy the bioethics requirement if they have completed a suitable ethics course at their community college. Transfer students who have completed a course that articulates to Mathematics 22, Introduction to Calculus of Several Variables, prior to transfer do not need to complete Mathematics 23A.
Lower-division requirements in bioengineering are:
Mathematics:
• Mathematics 19A and 19B, Calculus for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (two quarters); Mathematics 23A, Multivariable Calculus
• Applied Mathematics and Statistics 7/L, Statistical Methods for the Biological and Enviromental Sciences with Laboratory
• Applied Mathematics and Statistics 27/L, Mathematical Methods for Engineers with Laboratory or Mathematics 21, Linear Algebra, and Mathematics 24, Ordinary Differential Equations
Science:
• Chemistry 1A, 1B/M, and 1C/N, General Chemistry with Laboratory
• Biology 20A, Cell and Molecular Biology, and 20B, Development and Physiology
• Physics 5A/L, B/M, and C/N, Introduction to Physics
Computing:
• Biomolecular Engineering 60, Programming for Biologists and Biochemists, or Computer Science 12A, Introduction to Programming
• Computer Engineering 12, Computer Systems and Assembly Language
Lower-division articulation is listed on the Assist web site. For a complete list of lower-division courses for the major, visit www.soe.ucsc.edu/programs/bioinformatics/undergraduate/curriculum.html.
A Sample of Research
Baskin Department Chair of Biomolecular Engineering Phillip Berman is a pioneer in the development of recombinant vaccines for AIDS and other infectious diseases. He recently joined UCSC after 25 years of experience in the biotechnology industry, bringing with him a knowledge of what employers are looking for in new graduates, shared with students in his new undergraduate course on drug development.
Sri Kurniawan joins the bioengineering faculty in fall 2007, and will mentor students in assistive technology research. Her focus is on the design and evaluation of interactive systems that help people with special needs, including older persons, people with disabilities, and children. She joins professor Roberto Manduchi, who designs computer and cell-phone-based systems to assist the blind, and teaches an innovative course in universal access and disability.
Kevin Karplus is applying his knowledge of protein structure prediction to the problem of protein engineering. Collaborating with several research groups, he is working to design proteins that can sort carbon nanotubes according to their properties. Professor Karplus is a recent recipient of a campus teaching award and chair of the education committee of the International Society for Computational Biology, the lead professional society in bioinformatics.
Professor David Haussler has developed one of the world’s premier tools for comparative genomics, the UCSC Genome Browser. Using this tool, researchers around the world can better understand human genetics and disease though comprehensive analysis of multiple genomes. Professor Haussler was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences, in part due to his outstanding contributions to the Human Genome Project.
Undergraduate Research and Education Abroad Opportunities
More information about bioengineering research and undergraduate research opportunities can be found on the web at www.cbse.ucsc.edu, biomedical.ucsc.edu, marcmbrs.ucsc.edu, surf-it.soe.ucsc.edu, and graddiv.ucsc.edu/ucleads.
Education Abroad Opportunities
SoE students may wish to develop their cross cultural competency, typically via the Education Abroad Program (EAP). Interested students must work very closely with the faculty and academic advisers in their major very early during the first or second year to create a plan for transferability of course work toward graduation. For more EAP information, visit eap.ucop.edu/eap/country/default.htm.
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