As president of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Dawn Elliott will focus on education

Dawn Elliott, chair of the University of Delaware’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been elected president of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). Founded in 1968, this professional society for biomedical engineering and bioengineering has more than 7,000 members.

As president, Elliott plans to launch an initiative to study biomedical engineering education. She wants to conduct market research to find out how industry professionals perceive biomedical engineering students and how academic biomedical engineering departments can optimize student success.

This is important because biomedical engineering and bioengineering are relatively new compared to other engineering disciplines, such as electrical and mechanical engineering. For example, ABET—the accrediting body for engineering programs—accredited its first biomedical engineering department in 1972, four decades after they started accrediting engineering departments.

In 2011, Elliott came to UD as the founding director and sole primary faculty member of the biomedical engineering program, which achieved departmental status and received national accreditation four years later. The department now has 17 primary and joint faculty, 45 affiliates, and a doctoral degree program. Recent graduates have landed jobs at firms such as Johnson & Johnson and Siemens or continued their education at graduate schools such as Columbia University, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania… Continue reading.