Biomedical Engineering Society
About Us
The University of Virginia student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) is dedicated to promoting the personal and professional development of its members and enhancing the community of scholarship within the department and the university. Our chapter is comprised of undergraduate and graduate students within the BME department as well as students in other departments interested in biomedical engineering. Our core values include fostering the development of our members via participation in BMES general body meetings and attendance at national conferences, departmental symposia, and university-wide colloquia; enhancing the sense of community within the department, university, and central Virginia community via community service events, orientation events for incoming students, jointly sponsoring guest lectures with other student societies, and sponsoring student-student and student-faculty interactions both within and outside of the classroom environment; and increasing the chapter’s awareness on the national scale via increased submission and attendance at national and international conferences, recruiting more guest speakers from national corporations, and enhancing communication with the BMES national chapter through the president and vice president of graduate and national affairs. Our chapter is dedicated to improving the understanding of the field of biomedical engineering, fulfilling the intellectual needs of its students, and assisting in their preparation for a career in biomedical engineering.
New Student Orientation
For incoming graduate students, BMES organizes a week of orientation activities to introduce new students to the department and helping them become more involved in departmental events. Current graduate students volunteer to serve as mentors to incoming graduate students to assist the incoming students in making a smooth transition to graduate school at UVa. Orientation week culminates with our annual potluck picnic. BMES also plays a leading role in organizing the annual departmental fall picnic, usually held at the Elk’s Lodge in Charlottesville.
Undergraduate Research
The Biomedical Engineering Society is devoted promoting the exchange of scientific ideas between undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty. Through research shadowing opportunities within our laboratories and those of our collaborators as well as clinical shadowing opportunities being coordinated with the UVa School of Medicine, we provide students with a means of exploring their interests within this burgeoning field.
Annual Graduate Student Symposium
One of the hallmarks of the graduate experience at the University of Virginia is the annual student research symposium held in April. Among the largest symposia of its kind in the country, this forum allows senior graduate students to present their research to an audience of their peers, faculty, and guests from the university and area business communities. This is one of the few times that we are able to highlight the student-led research being conducted in the more than two dozen labs in our department, and to see what has led us to become the #2 most highly cited BME department in the world. The symposium is jointly administered by the BMES student chapter and the faculty within the biomedical engineering department. All students in the third year of their doctoral thesis work or those expecting to receive Master of Science, Master of Engineering, or Doctor of Philosophy degrees within the next twelve months are invited to present their findings and research directions in the form of a brief oral presentation. Students have found great merit in the symposium as a way to prepare for national conference presentations and faculty candidacy presentations.
Networking Opportunities
The UVa BMES chapter assists in providing the department with seminar speakers and helps fund trips to research parks and industry sites for its members. We also try to provide funding for students to attend conferences when they don’t have sufficient funding from their labs through our annual travel awards.
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