It's over two years since the BME Department moved into the Carl A. Gerstacker Building; this is the first building in the Bioengineering Quadrangle on North Campus. The lab wing of the 2nd BME building is complete and we will finish full building construction by the end of summer 2006. Twelve faculty hold primary appointments in BME, six others hold significant secondary appointments, and more than 50 additional faculty hold affiliated (0%) appointments. They lead a wide range of programs in biofluid mechanics, microfluidics, biologic micro- and nanotechnology, BioMEMS, biomaterials, biomolecular machines, tissue engineering, biomedical optics, biotechnology, biomechanics, and biomedical imaging.

Our academic programs continue to grow. We now have about 150 students in the BS program and over 210 in the graduate program. We have now graduated three BS classes and the undergraduate program is fully primed with about 50-60 students per year. A number of new undergraduate courses have been developed and we have applied for ABET accreditation starting in 2006. The graduate program is also experiencing dramatic growth in both size and quality. We had nearly 400 applications for this year's entering graduate class of about 25 students, and the current graduate student body is the most gifted ever at Michigan. Because of our newness, we are a well-guarded secret outside the Midwest. With the tremendous growth in size and quality in the BME Department over the last 5 years, however, we believe that UM-BME is rapidly becoming one of the premier departments in the country. For example, did you know that:

The University of Michigan is the home of the only NASA-funded bioengineering program of its kind, the UM-NASA Bioscience and Engineering Institute. UM-NBEI is responsible for conducting research in many bioengineering fields. Multiple research projects explore basic biology and biotechnology related to the bioscience and engineering interface and each project has its own relevance to NASA's goals. UM-NBEI has been up and running for over a year and all research projects are doing well.

According to data supplied by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) 2003-2004 survey of engineering departments, UM-BME has:

• The largest graduate BME program in the country
  
• Awarded more graduate BME degrees than any other department in the country
  
• The third-highest research expenditures per faculty member of all BME departments
  
• The sixth-highest total research expenditures of all BME departments
  
• One of the lowest student-to-faculty ratios of the top 20 undergraduate BME programs

Our large research expenditures and active graduate program, coupled with a relatively small undergraduate program focused on research experiences and career development, makes UM-BME a nearly ideal environment for graduate and undergraduate education. So it's a good time to be a biomedical engineer at Michigan.