MEDICAL PHYSICS CURRICULUM FOR UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Medical physics demands expertise from a wide variety of disciplines and combines areas such as medical imaging, radiation therapy, nuclear oncology, even a new rapidly-growing field of nanomedicine. Medical physicists often have a physics or engineering background, but at the same time possess knowledge about radiation-tissue interactions and good general knowledge of biology, anatomy and physiology. The training of professionals and contributing to this technological field requires multidisciplinary education. In this paper, we are striving to enrich the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students by developing an undergraduate program in medical physics. We discuss the new curriculum and the research/design sequence in medical physics for the undergraduate students. This innovative program will offer to undergraduate students both course work and intensive research experiences to better prepare them to lead the discovery of superior diagnostic techniques and treatments of diseases.