The BioArchitects of Occidental College is a club that was created to engage students in the relatively new science of Bioengineering and to give interested students hands-on experience in a lab team environment working on self-designed projects.
Bioengineers are engineers who use the principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create usable, tangible, economically viable products. Biological engineering employs knowledge and expertise from a number of pure and applied sciences, such as mass and heat transfer, kinetics, biocatalysts, biomechanics, bioinformatics, separation and purification processes, bioreactor design, surface science, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and polymer science. It is used in the design of medical devices, diagnostic equipment, biocompatible materials, renewable bioenergy, ecological engineering, agricultural engineering, and other areas that improve the living standards of societies.
In general, biological engineers attempt to either mimic biological systems to create products or modify and control biological systems so that they can replace, augment, or sustain chemical and mechanical processes. Bioengineers can apply their expertise to other applications of engineering and biotechnology, including genetic modification of plants and microorganisms, bioprocess engineering, and biocatalysis.
Because other engineering disciplines also address living organisms (e.g., prosthetics in bio-mechanical engineering), the term biological engineering can be applied more broadly to include agricultural engineering and biotechnology, which notably can address non-healthcare objectives as well (unlike biomedical engineering). In fact, many old agricultural engineering departments in universities over the world have rebranded themselves as agricultural and biological engineering or agricultural and biosystems engineering. Biological engineering is also called bioengineering by some colleges and biomedical engineering is called bioengineering by others, and is a rapidly developing field with fluid categorization. Depending on the institution and particular definitional boundaries employed, some major fields of bioengineering may be categorised as (note these may overlap):
