UC Irvine creates new engineering department

Engineers at UC Irvine have more options to consider now that a new

department has been approved.

Biomedical engineering is the fifth department to be added to the

Henry Samueli School of Engineering. It is expected to enroll about 50

new undergraduates and 15 new graduate students this fall.

The new department is situated in a hotbed of biomedical companies.

There are 1,400 in Southern California, according to the California

Healthcare Institute, which invested more than $850 million to research

and develop new products in 2000.

The department will capitalize on UCI’s existing strengths in

bio-optics, nanoscale systems, computational technologies and tissue

engineering.