New Biomedical Engineering Program

Reported by Megan Miller

This fall, George Fox University (GFU) added the Biomedical Engineering (BME) major.

Many students at GFU have a desire to pursue the biomedical field because “it’s a solution for the healthcare industry,” said Professor Young Bok Kang, the newly hired assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at GFU.

Professor Kang worked in the field of Tissue Engineering at Celltrition Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in Incheon, South Korea, for seven years before pursuing his PhD at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He also worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for three years as a postdoctoral researcher before coming to teach at GFU.  

Kang believes that the new program will have a great impact at GFU because it will “supply resources to the industry and academia.”

GFU will also be able to bring in more undergraduate students who would have otherwise passed up the opportunity to attend George Fox because of the lack of a BME program. “There is a lot of need in medicine for biomedical engineers, so we jump in and follow the trend of this time and initiate a biomedical program at our school,” said Kang.

Although classes will not begin until Fall 2019, the engineering professors have already begun the prep work for the new curriculum. The school hopes to hire one to two more faculty members to teach in the BME program alongside Professor Kang.

GFU will only offer BME undergraduate courses, but is hoping to move towards the implementation of  a master's program in the next few years after the first biomedical engineers graduate.