Comparing Biomedical Engineering to Other Fields

By: Noemi Melo      

             Biomedical engineering is different from all other engineering fields. This is because of the way it deals with the understanding of the human body. For example, biomedical engineers need to know about molecules, cells, tissues, organs, the circulatory system, nerves, muscles, bones, and anything that will help them understand how the body works. As a biomedical engineer, you must add life sciences and the medical knowledge that is necessary to understand the frame work of the problems which you will face. With biomedical engineering, you are studying biology and engineering at the same time. Engineers design equipment and devices, such as artificial internal organs and the replacements of body parts. These engineers need to know how to install, adjust, maintain, repair, and provide technical support for the devices they make. They have to develop life support systems, as well as create devices to aid the impaired or disabled and they create systems to allow better diagnosis of medical disorders. Another difference that biomedical engineering has with the other engineering fields is that in this field these engineers mainly work in health care.

             Many of the other engineering fields don’t have to deal with the understanding of the human body and how it works. Aside from this difference other engineers don’t have to worry about reconstructing a heart or body part. Computer engineers focus on computers and anything related to technology. A mechanical engineer focuses on the development of processes and products. They have to build a product and test it out to see if it was properly developed. Although biomedical engineers develop products as well they manly focus on developing products for the body and not like car parts and so on. A packaging engineer focuses on the manufacturing process of a product and the placement of the product. The other engineering fields don’t focus on building prosthetics and organs.

             As a biomedical engineer you get to help paralyzed people walk again. For people who have been in accidents and have lost a body part, biomedical engineers design and produce prosthetics to help them walk again. Another cool thing that biomedical engineers do is reconstruct body organs, like a heart, to help people that need heart transplants get off the waiting list. Other than that, biomedical engineers study how they can cure cancer. A cancer that biomedical engineers have worked to cure is ovarian cancer. They have been able to build a 3D model of ovarian cancer in order to find out how to cure this type of cancer. In the future biomedical engineers will be able to cut back on melanoma biopsies and the goal of this new device will be to reduce the number of patients left with unnecessary biopsy scars and along with this they are looking forward to eliminating the cost of unnecessary procedures. Another technology is the electronic aspirin for people who suffer from migraines, cluster headaches, and so on. This device involves the permanent implant of small nerves stimulating this device in the upper gum on the side of the head normally affected by a headache. Biomedical engineers are also developing a needle-free diabetes care. This device will replace the poke with a patch. 

             With the information provided above everybody now knows how cool the field of biomedical engineering is rather than the other engineering fields.

                                                                   

Sources

Indiana University. "Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis." Is Biomedical Engineering              Right for Me? N.p., 2014. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.

"An Exploration of Biomedical Engineering." Youtube. N.p., 1 Dec. 2015. Web.

Engineering Ethics

Prompt #2

By: Kevin Chung

            Although there is no written rule on how engineers should work and behave, there are a code of ethics that are expected to be uphold. I was able to find what the ethics were on the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) website. And it lists the fundamental canon of these ethics. 

1.    Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

2.    Perform services only in areas of their competence.

3.    Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.

4.    Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.

5.    Avoid deceptive acts.

6.    Conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession

Picture Credit: aiche.org

            When I look at these canons, I feel that these ethical guidelines are the same as my ethics on how I should work and conduct myself in business. The first and second canons go together for me because I never do work that I feel unfit for unless I have some to help me with. That’s because I feel that if I perform a service badly, I will affect myself, and others negatively than what my intended purpose was. I agree with the third canon because of personal experience and from events from the real world, like the crises Volkswagen had gotten themselves into by lying about their car emissions. The fourth canon is how I treat others when I’m working in a group of people, and it's no different when working with clients or trustees. The fifth and sixth canons go together because acting honorably is avoiding deceptive acts and following the rules.

Looking at the ethics that engineers are expected to uphold, I believe that people already know the ethical guidelines that people in my field must follow. So that makes me think that most people in my field follow these ethics. And engineers don’t really have a choice. If we don’t uphold the safety of people when we create our products, then no one fund our projects and we’ll have no work. If engineers don’t work with clients or with agents faithfully without deceit and lies, then work will be difficult, if not, impossible because no can trust each other to get the work done. So people in my line of work must uphold these ethics if they want to be at all successful.

Taking in all the stuff that I’ve learned from looking at the ethics that are to be uphold as an engineer, I pretty sure I can do it. I’ve lived with the pretty same ethics that are required in engineering for my most of the teenage life. So I feel pretty prepared to follow these rules when I do become a mechanical engineer.  I hope that this article was helpful. If you have a question or just something to add to this, then please leave a comment and I will respond to it as soon as I can.

Sources

"Ethics." NSPE Provides a Code of Ethics and Other Resources to Practice Ethical Engineering. National Society of Engineers, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.                                                 

My Tour with a Multinational Packaging Company

By: Buck

Prompt #8

            This past Thursday I was able to take a trip to Manchester, Michigan along with twelve other members of Michigan State’s Coalition of Packaging Professionals and Academic Connections(CoPPAC). Here we visited Amcor, a large international packaging company, and we were given a fully sponsored company tour of their Manchester branch. This was my first experience visiting a packaging company and getting an idea of what my future career could potentially look like. Since it was my first time doing something like this, I took a lot away from it and gained a lot of real world experience about the field of packaging.

Picture Credit: amcor.com

            To start, I think giving an idea of what Amcor does would be helpful. Amcor is an Australian-based packaging company that works with both rigid and flexible plastics (Amcor, 2016). They have branches that work with companies in designing a new package and branches that create these designed packages with unique molds for the company. A large number of big brand companies have worked with Amcor, and they have built up a multinational name for themselves. 

            The interesting thing about the Manchester branch is that it is Amcor’s only branch that has both sides of the production under one roof. That means that the engineers and R&D employees are working in the same building as the factory that is creating the bottles that they are designing on computers. This allowed us to see the full process of how a company works with Amcor. It starts with the company approaching Amcor with a list an idea of what they want a package to say for its product. The company will work with Amcor’s graphic designers and R&D employees to create a virtual sketch of what their package might look like. Next, this computer generated design is tested through other software that will put the bottle through virtual test simulations that are similar to what physical bottles go through. This step is to make sure that the design that has been created is possible to mass produce. Next, Amcor uses 3D printing to develop a few physical models that can be shown to the company to ensure that this is what the company desires. Then, custom molds are made and the production of the actual bottle begins in Amcor’s factories using both injection and air pressure molding methods. 

Being able to see this whole process and where a packaging engineer fits into each step was extremely helpful in getting an idea of my future. This experience has increased my excitement as I get to see how my life in packaging will unwrap. I think that working for a packaging company like Amcor would be an amazing opportunity to further my knowledge and experience in the packaging world. This hand-on experience has taught me that pursuing packaging doesn’t necessarily mean that once I am done with my degree that I will stop learning and only use what I learned at school. In the elastic world of packaging, the learning never fully stops, and every day you deal with new problems that require unique and creative solutions. 

Sources

Amcor - Investor Relations - Financial Information and ASX Announcements. N.p., 2016. Web.