The Senior Capstone Design Course
The Bioengineering Senior Capstone Design course (BioE 192) trains Berkeley’s bioengineering students for leadership and innovation in the medical technology arena. The capstone course gives students deep exposure to realistic challenges in the dynamic and stimulating clinical and commercial medical technology environment. Learning to embed in, interface with, and understand diverse technical environments is a key aspect of the experience, as is acquiring the ability to grasp and address an ambiguous problem in biomedicine.
In collaboration with a diverse set of physician “clients” in varied clinical specialties at UCSF, Stanford, UC Davis, and internationally, small student teams develop and test promising novel medical device solutions during a 15-week course.
These projects provide the focus for students to work through one iteration of the engineering design process: needs refinement and formulation, setting target specifications, concept generation and down-selection, specification refinement, functional prototyping, testing, and redesign. Three formal design reviews are conducted, with process outcomes formalized in oral and written documentation. Teamwork is a core aspect of the experience, including interaction with physicians. Course content is augmented with invited guest lectures from industry, regulatory professionals, and clinical practice.
Course goals
- Provide engineering design training while creating an intellectual environment in which interdisciplinary innovation is promoted and encouraged.
- Challenge our students to innovate and improve home care technologies, diagnostics, and therapies with true clinical need while gaining experience in intellectual property.
- Implement an educational framework conducive to holistic user needs assessment, integration of universal design principles, and analysis of healthcare market trends.
- Foster a dialogue between engineers and clinicians that supports critical communication skills necessary to empower generation and assessment of design ideas in a constantly changing interdisciplinary field.
