Shamelessly Selling You BME 😍🧬🦾

Welcome back everyone. We’ve got a fun one for you today…ever been interested in what Biomedical Engineering (BME) is all about? Today we’re gonna demystify it’s mysteries with a slightly bias-I mean fun-overview! Ready? Let’s go!

Ok, ✨propoganda time✨!

Of course Basil are going to walk you through other important information for choosing your specialisation….at some point…,

BUT

for those of you who have already realised that BME is awesome and are researching into our spec and what it can do for you, we thought that we’d give you some information 🌅 bright & early 🌅 to help you to make some informed decisions and to have some fire motivation to get those scores to get into your first choice now! (Keep an eye out for our future blog post on academic help).

In all seriousness though, here is a collection of real pictures that I’ve gotten to do this year:

As you can clearly see, BME is incredible! I’ve only been in it for a tad more than one semester, and we already have had some awesome opportunities to work with a vast quantity of different things! So I’m here today to break down the social & academic reasons why BME is so awesome which aren’t often explored in heaps of detail. Let’s get into it!

Adventure Time, Anyone?

What makes the social environment different for BME compared to any other specialisation? For starters, BME is within the Department of Engineering Science and Biomedical Engineering, which means that you share some of your classes with the EngSci kids! And within the very first two weeks of you being in your specialisation, you get to go on your own camp to get to know everybody.

Yep! We’re the only department that does this actually, and it was honestly such a good way to get to know your smaller cohort – people who you’ll be spending the next 3 years with! You get to go to Taupō for a few days, go on an industry tour, stay in cabins with students and make some awesome friends and connections to the lecturers! ⭐ If you want to learn more specific details about the camp, check out our EngSci’s post from Ashmit here!

BME is also limited to a capacity of 35 people, meaning that you often end up forming a tight knit group with friends xx!

BESA! 🥰

Each speculation gets their own representative club, and you guessed it! The one for BME & EngSci is called 💖 BESA 💖! These guys are super sweet and put in so much effort to make socialising & connecting as easy as they can! I went to a Part II Social Night before the camp trip, and I found it invaluable in terms of connecting with people early on! These guys do so many things, and each one is a fantastic opportunity to meet people in these degrees! If you’re interested in checking them out or going to some of their events now for more of an insight into BME, check out their socials here! (P.S. If you see me around one of these events, you’re also more than welcome to come & say hi 🙂 👋! xx)

💡 Pro Tip: If you’re particularly interested in n*tw*rk*ng and finding out what your furture career paths can look like whilst getting free food and having a lovely time, check out BESA’s mentorship program, which runs every semester! Keep an eye out for BESAs speed interviews, CV/industry evenings and social nights for more connection and fun :)!

BME fully embraces the “Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one” quote.

So What Do We Actually Do??

One of the reasons that BME is so great is that it covers so many engineering bases! Throughout your 3 specialized years at UoA, you get to learn so much detail about a vast quantity of topics, gifting you the foundational knowledge to work in a huge variety of sectors:

The pie chart above showcases the brief breakdown of the skill that you will learn about from Part II and beyond – and this is without considering your electives or your Part 4 project yet! These more “individualised opportunities” allow you to pick what you really love about BME (or want to develop further) and explore it more, so BME is really all about what you make it. If you’re keen to look into BME electives and/or breakdown here or other specialisation pathways here! Make sure to keep an eye out for my future post which will compare Biomedical Engineering with the 9 other specialisations offered at the University of Auckland!

So if you are excited about this – or heck, with the amount of mathematical modelling we do, if you were like “OMG THERE’S A CHART” – then BME is probably a really nice possibility for you!

*Disclaimer: I have not taken all of these courses yet, so this is just from a brief overview of how often certain skills seem to pop up in papers based off of the information here (with some papers containing more than one skill).

Another Wicked Academic Moment 🤙

We have our own building. Yeah, you heard that right.

The ABI (😏) is located on 70 Symonds Street, and…believe it or not…is home to a lot of the bioengineering research conducted & put out by the University. This personal space (alongside the special levels that you’ll get to use in Part 4 in the general engineering building) is where some of your classes will be held, alongside classes and labs in both the engineering & biology buildings and at Grafton campus (where the medical school is). If you’re strategic about gaining connections & internships, you might land yourself a research job at the ABI as well (see more on networking & it’s possibilities here!).

So if these things make you feel like “Y’know what, BME sounds actually pretty neat”, then I’d highly recommend going & chatting to a few people in older years or doing some research! You’ll likely find some BMEs around the Leech space, you can email any of your lecturers who took BME for a fun little chat – or if you don’t feel like doing any of these things and want to learn more, feel free to drop a comment below and Basil, our true BME expert, will answer your questions in the next post! 🖊️🐸

So come and join us!

Oh, *cough* sorry I mean…

Come & join us 😎

BME has got so much potential, and you can learn about such a broad amount of topics. At the end of the day, you want to make sure that you’re studying something that you are genuinely passionate about & interested in. And if BME is what gets those sparks firing for you, then we’ve got 35 seats available in the next intake, and you are more than welcome to sign up to put your name on one 🪑💚.

Make sure to check out the other blogs in the 2025 series (and other years for more info!) for more information in BME and engineering in general.

But for now…

See you in the next blog post, & remember to keep growing! 🌱

– Basil & Iz