INTRODUCING ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTO A BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING CAPSTONE COURSE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

This paper describes the BioEngineering, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (BioENGINE) program in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. A senior design capstone course, the BioENGINE program focuses on solving real-world biomedical engineering problems with an entrepreneurial mindset. Introduced in 2015, the program has successfully prepared over 326 students (approximately 108 students per year) to engage in technology commercialization and enterprise building. Despite the program's youth, there has been significant success in better preparing undergraduate engineering students from various disciplines interested in the health care industry to engage in medical device design and commercialization. The unique multidisciplinary approaches, both at the student and mentorship levels of the program, have provided undergraduate students with a strong breadth of knowledge as well as the necessary innovative and practice components required of biomedical engineering positions in today's current market. With continuous improvement, the BioENGINE program may come to serve as a roadmap for other capstone courses and help them to become more successful in preparing future engineering leaders and innovators.