Welcome to Biomedical Engineering :)

Hi everyone :))

It’s great to have you here.

My name is Jacob Mathew, and I am excited to be your Biomedical Engineering blogger for 2022. I hope the first half of engineering has treated you well and has incited a deeper passion for engineering. I presume some of you are still recovering from ENGGEN 121, which I don’t blame as I too still get flashbacks from Hazim’s part of the exam. Nonetheless, semester 2 has great courses in store for you, particularly for those who have not been introduced to the world of coding yet. Reading this blog right now means that you are already a step ahead in choosing your specialisation, so let’s be proud of that for now!

Before I start blogging about BME, I’ll just say a bit about myself. I like watching tv shows, and movies, doing math, eating with friends, baking, and cooking. Also, I like watching Marvel and a lot of superhero TV shows (sadly, even the cringe ones). My favourite superhero (arguably, a villain) is the Scarlet Witch, with Doctor Strange as my second favourite.

Why did I choose Biomedical Engineering? This is perhaps the most asked question you will get at the end of the first year. Personally, I have a strong passion for bioinstrumentation and in developing medical devices that can have a meaningful impact on the healthcare system. I also had interests to do Biomed when I was in high school, but with a profound passion for physics and calculus, it did not sit right with me to let go of the two subjects I enjoyed the most, which led me to take Biomedical Engineering – the best of both worlds.

One of the notions about BME is the lack of employment. It is safe to say, this is not true. As Biomedical Engineers, you can branch out to jobs related to Engineering Science since your courses are similar, so the companies relevant to ENGSCI are also relevant to BME. The skill sets you learn are broad; it is the way you advertise yourself to other companies that matters – advice I got from a fellow part IV BME student that I am sharing here.

Choosing BME was certainly a difficult decision. Mainly because all I heard about it was the lack of employment, thanks to The Engineering Shuffle (don’t watch it if you are gullible like me). People who do BME know they want to do it, so if that is you, I advise you to just do it. It is paramount to pursue a specialisation you are genuinely passionate about, not one that offers the most money, employment, and so on.

For me, my main passion was bioinstrumentation and developing medical devices. I thought I could do this in Mechatronics so first-year was a tossup between BME and Mechatronics. As you probably couldn’t tell already, I chose – wait for it – Biomedical Engineering. I felt Mechatronics would have a much broader scope than what I wanted.

For the most part, semester one was okay. Let’s just say it could’ve been more dreadful. With the exception of ENGSCI 233 (a computer systems course :/), I thought most courses were a decent step up from first-year engineering in a way you can follow through, provided you put in the effort. I will have a whole post dedicated to the semester one courses, so stay tuned for that.

For now, all the best for your semester 2 courses. I am a Part 1 Assistance Mentor in those bright purple hoodies you can spot from miles away, so please say hi to me every Wednesday 3 – 5 pm at the Leech Study Space. Also, would be nice if we connected on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-mathew-4a7aa1242/

Thanks for reading this far

Hope to see you in my next post!