Carnegie Mellon University - Where Bold Thinkers Do Big Things

Since its founding in 1900, Carnegie Mellon has been a place where visionaries unite to solve the world’s most challenging problems. At CMU, students are just plain different. They’re bold thinkers. Passionate innovators. And resilient changemakers. They ask complex questions. Share forward-thinking ideas. And attack problems with a nuanced scope. Here, students don’t just imagine the future. They create it.

The College of Engineering - Where Forward Thinkers Find Their Home

CMU’s College of Engineering is a maker’s paradise, where adventurous thinking outweighs perfection and pushing boundaries is the norm. Here, students build a better world and design the future they want to see. They think critically about problems, work collaboratively to solve them, and maintain a persistent attitude when faced with challenges. In the College of Engineering, forward thinkers never linger. They just adapt and begin again. 

Revolutionizing Medicine with Biomedical Engineering

In the Biomedical Engineering (BME) department at CMU, students are revolutionizing the future of medicine with unconventional thinking, innovative research, and cutting-edge technology. BME students are leaders, creators, and out-of-the-box thinkers, trained to solve healthcare challenges through transformative engineering innovation.  

The work is hard, but they’re not alone. In the BME department, students are supported by dozens of faculty members with rich disciplinary knowledge in fields like cell and tissue engineering, cardiopulmonary engineering, biomaterials and nanotechnology. In BME, faculty are never told to ‘stay in their lane.’ Most BME faculty members enjoy cross-appointments in different departments and bring concepts from multiple engineering disciplines, the biological sciences, artificial intelligence, and robotics to their work. Carnegie Mellon faculty thus infuse their research with interdisciplinary insights, bringing them one step closer to developing the techniques and platforms that will define the future of medicine.  

With advanced study in tissue engineering, biomaterials, and biofabrication, clinicians and physicians can design new therapies that address the real-life medical challenges their patients face on a daily basis.

The Biomedical Engineering Department at CMU is the ideal place to study these topics because:

We invented the technique and built the platform for printing soft biological materials

In 2015, a team of researchers from CMU’s Biomedical Engineering Department published a paper detailing a new technique, called Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH), that can be used to 3D bioprint tissue scaffolds out of collagen and other soft materials. This revolutionary technique brought the field of regenerative medicine one step closer to 3D printing full-size, functional human tissues and organs.

We’re actively fine-tuning our research to bioengineer functional organs and tissues

Housed within the BME department at CMU, the Bioengineered Organs Initiative is a multi-disciplinary research effort designing long-term replacement organs engineered from bioprinted cellular and synthetic materials. By combining research from fields like 3D printing, tissue engineering, biomaterials, cellular mechanics, and artificial organs, CMU researchers are collectively working toward the technology that will one day eliminate the need for an organ transplant waiting list. This work attracted the attention of the Mayo Clinic, leading to the formation of the CMU-Mayo Clinic initiative Transforming Transplant. Current areas of research include: bioengineered hearts, lungs, and other organs; bioprinted Wagyu beef; advanced 3D bioprinters, and other enabling technologies.

At CMU, we’re passionate about training today’s physicians, biomedical engineers, and industry professionals for tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Through a rigorous curriculum and collaboration with world-renowned faculty, you’ll have the tools to create structurally complex 3D tissues, which you can replicate in your own organization right away.

With a Graduate Certificate in 3D Bioprinting and Biofabrication, tomorrow’s therapies are well within reach. Are you ready to join us? Call 412-501-2150 with your inquiries or send an email to apply@online.cmu.edu.