A Guide to Career Pathways with a Biocomputational Engineering Degree

I have directed the undergraduate degree in bioengineering at UMD for about the last five years. I constantly hear from our graduates that they feel passionate about their bioengineering degree but that they believe that they’d have many more career opportunities if they had skill depth in programming and data sciences. At the same time, I have heard from employers that there are many career opportunities available at biotechnology companies for students with training in programming and data sciences. Some of the bioengineering students have completed a minor in computer science, but this can be cumbersome. We believe that we have created a degree that combines the necessary fundamentals in bioengineering and biotechnology with the skills in programming and data science that will provide graduates with a significant competitive advantage.

To start, the program is grounded in fundamentals of both engineering and biology. This means that all graduates will inherently be quantitative problems solvers with a complementary knowledge of cellular and molecular biology. Adding to this, the program teaches skills in programming, statistics, data analysis, and machine learning. This positions graduates as ideal candidates to solve problems important in medicine. While graduates will have the skills to take any programming or data science job, they will be ideal candidates for biotech firms and consulting firms who need problem solvers with knowledge of biology/medicine and skills to analyze large and complex data sets.

As with any engineering degree, the biggest asset that our graduates can boast is a talent for quantitative problem solving. In my opinion, this skill is the most prominent characteristic of an engineering graduate, and separates our graduates from those who may have focused only on biology,  biotechnology, or programming. Beyond quantitative problem solving, our graduates will have a unique combination of fundamental knowledge in biology with basic skills in programming and data science. As compared to graduates who have a degree in bioengineering or biomedical engineering, our graduates will be skilled in programming and data science and thus can get to work solving medical problems with complex data sets. At the same time, as compared to students with degrees in computer science, our graduates will have the fundamental biology/biotechnology knowledge to apply their programming and data science skills to solve problems that impact health care and medicine.

The uniqueness lies in this combination of engineering, biology/biotechnology, and data science. Graduates will have the necessary skills to solve complex problems and will have the fundamental knowledge to understand the intricacies of the problems that they are solving.

Herein lies what we are most excited about. Graduates from our program will have the opportunity to immediately impact human health. Today more than ever our world is in need of new therapies — for cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and newly emerging infectious diseases. Moreover, the importance of rapid vaccine development is more clear than ever. Solving these problems requires computer modeling, bioinformatics, analysis of large and complex data sets, and many other important computational skills. Fortunately for our graduates, the Universities at Shady Grove campus is located in the midst of one of the hottest geographical regions for therapeutics development in the world.

Nearly every field is enhanced by leveraging data science. This is true for biotechnology and medicine as well. These companies are learning new ways to utilize computer modeling and machine learning to improve what they do. Our graduates will be prepared to step into this rapid evolution. To continue to adapt to the needs of the local industry, we are establishing partnerships between our program and companies that would hire our graduates. In particular, our partners would assist us in designing the projects that the students work on in their courses.

Students who enjoy working with computers or programming and who are passionate about applying their talents to improve human health are ideal for the program. Similarly, students who find that they are good at math and want to apply these skills to solve important problems will do very well in and beyond the program. At the same time, students who resonate with biology but are interested in learning how to use programming to solve today’s complex problems in biology are also great candidates for the program.

My role is to direct the bioengineering degree at UMD as well as the biocomputational engineering degree. The instructors in the program will be full time teachers in the program and will have backgrounds in computational biology, biotechnology, and data science. They will all be trained in modern instructional techniques that promote active learning and inquiry-based learning in the classroom, and they will prioritize student outcomes and student success above anything else.

I earned all of my degrees in electrical engineering and started my career in the telecommunications field in the early 2000s. While pursuing my degree, the technical aspects of the work (electronics, fiber optics, programming, modeling) kept me motivated, but after entering the workforce, I was lacking in the necessary passion to excel. After some soul searching, I decided that applying my skill set to improving health care would ignite the passion that I was looking for. In particular, I found that I could apply my skill set to developing rapid diagnostics that can improve health outcomes. I left the telecommunications field in 2005 to pursue a postdoctoral training opportunity in biomedical engineering. Following this, I was fortunate to obtain a faculty position in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at UMD to establish a research group that aims to address the challenges in the field of disease diagnostics.

I lead the amplified molecular sensors laboratory at UMD. We aim to overcome the challenges that are preventing the realization of the next generation of diagnostic systems. In particular, we emphasize the development and application of novel amplification strategies to add orders of magnitude improvement to chemical and biomolecular sensing, while at the same time improving the simplicity and usability of sensors and diagnostic systems. Our research has applications in identifying new ways to diagnose cancer, as well as rapid and low-cost methods to diagnose viral infections and antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections. To date, our most successful invention has been a paper-strip-based chemical and biological sensor that is not only easier to use than its commercial competitors, but it’s also orders of magnitude cheaper than the previous commercial solution while maintaining the same performance. Seeing the commercialization of this technology has been one of the most rewarding experiences for our group members.

My advice to any student deciding what path to pursue is to choose the path that combines their skills and their passion for improving their world around them. When you are passionate about the problems that you are solving in life, going to work is rewarding. This leads to success and pride at work as well as self-esteem and happiness beyond the workplace.

The courses in the biocomputational engineering program, which are all junior- and senior-level courses, are held at the new, state-of-the-art Biomedical Sciences and Engineering (BSE) education facility at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville, MD.

Before being admitted to the biocomputational engineering program, you must complete prerequisite math/science courses, lower-level General Education requirements (or an associate’s degree), and 60 total credits. Students can apply as transfer students from community colleges or four-year institutions. For more information, visit the program’s Admissions page.

The A. James Clark School of Engineering offers engineering scholarships to talented undergraduates, including transfer students. Students may also apply for federal financial aid, national scholarships, and university scholarships. For more information, visit the School of Engineering Admissions & Financial Aid page or the Universities at Shady Grove Admissions & Aid page.

Due to a strong foundational knowledge of biology and medicine as well as data science and computation, graduates will be uniquely positioned as ideal candidates for biotech firms and consulting firms. They will be highly qualified for meaningful and fulfilling career opportunities in the emerging biopharma, biotech, and biomedical industries, especially in Maryland and throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

Absolutely. The biotech industry is a huge and growing industry actively seeking new experts with skills in biology and data science. The COVID-19 pandemic has also shed light on the ever-increasing demand for researchers and engineers to devote their time toward the study and prevention of new infectious diseases.

The instructors are full-time UMD professors with backgrounds in computational biology, biotechnology, and data science. They are trained in modern instructional techniques that promote active learning and inquiry-based learning in the classroom.

You are welcome to reach out to our program coordinator, who would be happy to answer your questions. You can contact Ariana Parra, Biocomputational Engineering Program Representative, at biocomp@umd.edu or you can book a meeting with her.