CBME Values & Mission

Four core values shape our organization and the actions we take to support our talented researchers:

  1. Mentorship: We believe that to meet the great medical challenges of the 21 st century requires researchers who have had individualized, consistent, and thoughtful training from more experienced mentors. Our students and faculty are committed to engaging diverse perspectives and meeting the unique educational demands required to develop independent and innovative researchers.
  2. Integrity: Integrity in our actions, our research, and even our conversations is a priority for this Center. Towards this end, we communicate openly amongst both faculty and students, and we seek and share feedback and concerns at all levels.
  3. Diversity: As a community that spans multiple schools and departments, the Center is by design a meeting ground for the unique cultures of academic engineering and biology and clinical medicine. This intellectual diversity reflects our deep respect for and appreciation of all individual identities, and considerations of equity and access are prevalent in every aspect of our work.
  4. Scholarly Impact: Our members, students and faculty alike, seek to improve the lives of people through their research. This awareness of and commitment to eventual clinical translation distinguishes our work and reflects our deep awareness of the importance of biomedical engineering in society.

“… the formation at Brown of a Center of Biomedical Engineering as an administrative academic unit to promote and nurture undergraduate and graduate programs in this area and to facilitate interdisciplinary research in the field …”

-From the “Brown CBME Proposal", June 2001

The Center for Biomedical Engineering's mission is threefold:

  1. To oversee the undergraduate BME concentration and the BME graduate program (ScM & PhD) and to innovate (with scientific rigor, cross-cutting disciplinary content) the BME curriculum to achieve a "Brown-style academic enrichment" - as an educational paradigm for the field.

  2. To foster and enhance research synergy, connectivity and funding across the Brown University community; from the engineering/physical sciences through the life sciences on campus to the medical school and local hospitals; and to build connections with other centers at Brown and surrounding institutions.

  3. To enhance the off-campus interface of Brown's BME community to industry, foundations, government labs, other academic institutions and the public health care sector.