Welcome to the MedLibrary.org Wikipedia Supplement on Talk:Bioengineering -- Please Click to Return to Front Page

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chemical and Bio Engineering, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Chemical and Bio Engineering articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

	This article is part of WikiProject Engineering, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to engineering on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, join the project, visit the project portal, and contribute to the project discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as high-importance.

	This article is within the scope of the Technology WikiProject, a group related to the the study of Technology. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
Additional information: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked Neutrality: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call: <!-- 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points are appropriately cited. --> |B-Class-1=yes/no <!-- 2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes/no <!-- 3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes/no <!-- 4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes/no <!-- 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes/no <!-- 6. It is written from a neutral point of view. --> |B-Class-6=yes/no

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess.
Start	This page has been rated as Start-Class on the quality assessment scale
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance assessment scale

Robotics portal Bioengineering is within the scope of WikiProject Robotics, which aims to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Robotics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page (Talk), where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Please note:

that is should be: i.e., for example should be: e.g.,

Relationship to Agricultural Engineering

Biological/Biosystems/Bioresource Engineering, for all intensive purposes is simply a renaming of Agricultural Engineering. In fact, when I was studying Agricultural Engineering in university, we came back after one summer break to find the course names changed to Biological Engineering, etc... There have been some changes in the dicipline in the last 20 years with a broader focus than just the biological systems relating to agriculture. The name change is more for "poltical correctness" as Ag. Engineers had found themselves working in diverse fields such as biomedical engineering, aquacultural engineering, food processing, waste treatment, etc... I often have trouble explaining to others exactly what my training is, suffice it to say that at university I took classes with civils, mechs, and chemical engineers. I would say the dicipline is a combination of the heat/mass transfer and processing end of chemical engineering, the classic machine design, HVAC, and controls of mechanical engineering, and the soils and light wood structures portion of civil. Some studies unique to Bioengineering are: negative pressure HVAC, irrigation/drainage engineering, biomechanics, machine-plant/soil interaction. There needs to be some sort of combination/connection to the Agricultural Engineering article. --Mf135gas 06:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that this article is regarding the term bioengineering as it relates to the application of engineering to the solution of medical problems. This would exclude topics on irrigation/drainage, HVAC, etc. and focus on tissue engineering, neural engineering, prosthesis, etc. What you are referring to is still called mainly agricultural engineering, bioresource engineering, and agricultural engineering. I would consider these separate fields.

I placed the merge tag because, at least in the US, bioengineering and biomedical engineering are terms that are used with little distinction between the two. Is there a source? This may come from the use of the term "bioengineered" to refer to food that has been genetically modified, when in reality these techniques rely mostly on molecular biology than engineering techniques.

--ChrisTN 04:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that what I am referring to is still mainly referred as Ag. Engineering by the un-informed public. However, as a profession we have adopted the name Bioengineering to refer to the discipline engineering formerly known as Ag Engineering, but also includes all branches of engineering that relate to biological systems. For instance, the national organisation for Bioengineering in Canada is: [1], formerly known as CSAE up until the annual general meeting last year. Our sister institution in the US also changed its name last year. The ASAE is now the ASABE: [2]. It is not uncommon to find someone holding a degree in Bioengineering, who studied irrigation at one point in their undergrad life now working on degisn of human prosthetics. Biomedical engineering is a sub-discipline of Biological engineering, but is really a multi-disciplinary field also involving Medical professionals. Bioengineering is a very diverse field, required syllabus, at least in Canadian Universities (a lot of American ones from what I understand too) includes everything from classical biology to control engineering (root locus, state-space analysis and all that fun stuff). There does definitly need to be some sort of distinction between Bioengineering and "genetic engineering" which is not a discipline of engineering.

A good side note here is the study of environmental engineering which, has become a buzz in the last number of years. In most universities it is a branch of civil engineering, which is odd seeing as how most of the civil profs have backgrounds in reenforced conrete or traffic control and have never taken a microbiology, or transport phenomena course beyond Darcy's equation. Part of the thrust behind the name change from Ag. Engineering to Bioengineering was the feeling that the emerging discipline of Environmental Engineering was "coopted" from Ag. Engineering.

I don't mean this to be a bit of a tirade, although it is ironic as a member CSAE I voted against the whole name change. Hope this makes sense.--Mf135gas 03:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I do not think that the articles of bioengineering and biomedical engineering should be put within the same article. Unless biomedical engineering is regarded as some subdivison of bioengineering. Biomedical engineers use many aspects of biological engineering and manipulation of biological systems to create health related devices and molecules. Bioengineering is a wide field and many people who major in bioengineering will not be working in a medical related field. Especially bioengineers working in the animal-health or food industry. Bioengineers who might in the future use biological systems to find alternate sources of energy would also not be doing health related studies. These two articles represent two differant fields of study, that although are related, are not the same thing. The two articles should be cept seperate.--franci 09 (april 2, 2006)

I guess the problem is that I come from a US background where the terms are used interchangeably. In addition, labs that conduct research into optimization of biofuel resources use the same engineering techniques in order to develop antibiotics. It doesn't make sense to call one person a "biomedical engineer" and one a "bioengineer" when they may be working side-by-side on the lab bench. Nevertheless, I see your point. I just hope that someone looking into a degree programm in a "bioengineering" department will assume that it is substantially different than a program in "biomedical engineering". If you compare the bioengineering program at UCSD to the biomedical engineering program at Washington University you will see what I mean.ChrisTN 00:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

General Confusion

I don't think they should be merged. I actually think that there should be some type of warning that states that this is bioengineering which is not to be confused with biomedical engineering or biological engineering which are related fields but not the same thing. Also as a graduate of a bioengineering program I am generally confused as to how graduates of agricultural engineering could be a bioengineer. In my program we learn how to model biological systems in order to mimic these systems. It is more of a field that understands complex systems then a field that makes biological products or modifies food. We learned things areas like neural networks, genetic algorithms, evolutionary programming, and other biomemitic tools. I never studied anything that mechanical engineers or electrical engineers did. I was always told that they would deal with the simple linear systems, where the bioengineers would deal with the complex non-linear systems. If anyone has any feedback on this I would love to hear it. Thank You. --Lefevre18 04:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Mechanical engineers and electrical engineers do deal with nonlinear systems. Much research has been conducted on nonlinearities in heart rate and balance control that relates to device development which might be considered the mechanical engineering portion of BME/BE. Electrical engineering knowledge is used in order to understand how to exert external control over nonlinear systems or to use nonlinear systems to introduce beneficial noise, for example.ChrisTN

This is not a real clear piece. I recommend dividing the first par into two. The first par should give the definition then the second present the distinction between medical and agricultural applications. Also, the (proposed) second par is not very clear as stands. I had to read it twice silently and aloud a third time to make sense of it.

I suggest an edit for clarification. Is it okay for me to implement this? Pb1 Done! :-)

I would like to confirm the bioengineering does not have any "real" association with agricultural engineering and is essential the same thing as biomedical engineering. There may be some slight distinctions between bio- and biomed-, however, if you review the course requirements at any of the leading institutions, they are nearly identical, and in my program (UCSD) and many others the terms are used interchangeably. So not to flame MF135gas too bad..but your statement is not reflective of the Bioengineering discipline as a whole...oh and it is not "all intensive purposes".... its "all intents and purposes". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjsandiego (talk • contribs) 00:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 Synthetic Biology 2 Cleanup 3 Merger between Bioengineering and Biological Engineering 3.1 Need to Establish Hierarchy of Sciences & Fields of Study 4 Interwiki link to WIkiversity

Synthetic Biology

I would like to note that bioengineering seems to include synthetic engineering (wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology ) and that this article should both mention/list synthetic biology and explain or create a separate page explaining what differentiates the two. The synthbio and the bioengineering pages should be linked somehow. I say this because I have trouble understanding the differences between the two. And obviously I would do this myself but I don't know squat about the topics. I'm a humanities kind of guy. Maybe I'll post this on the synthbio talk page too. Djdoobwah (talk) 09:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup

This article was obviously the result of a merger between similar articles a while ago, and reading through it I feel that it is in dire need of a clean-up. I'll give it a going over now, but if anyone has any comments or issues with what I change please raise them! Gumbacious (talk) 06:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I have rewritten the start of this article, but I think a merger between bioengineering and Biological Engineering is in order. Both articles contain much the same content, using slightly different language. Gumbacious (talk) 06:36, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Merger between Bioengineering and Biological Engineering

Both articles cover effectively the same material, and in my opinion the two are interchangeable. It is because of this that I am proposing the merger between the two. If the merger is successful, I propose that the page be named Bioengineering, with searches for Biological Engineering redirecting here. Any ideas/comments? Gumbacious (talk) 06:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

• Support sounds reasonable, though I am no expert in the field.--Utahredrock (talk) 04:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
• Support for the same reason I would support mergers between biophysics and biological physics, or biochemistry and biological chemistry. --chodges (talk) 19:05, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
• Do Not Support As an active member of several professional societies that use these terms, I believe the consensus view is that these are distinct. Biological Engineering is a fundamental engineering discipline founded on the science of biology, while Bioengineering (synonymous with Biomedical and Medical Engineering) is an applied engineering discipline focused on applications related to human health. While Biological Engineers do work with medicine, that is only one of many biological sciences they work with (others include plant biology, animal science, microbiology, ecology, to name a few). With the advent of Biological Engineering one can argue that there are now four science-based engineering disciplines (Biological Engineering - Biology; Chemical Engineering - Chemistry; Electrical Engineering - Physics/Electromagnetism; and Mechanical Engineering - Physics/Classical Mechanics, Statics, and Dynamics). Similarly, Bioengineering can be classed in the larger group of industrial sector-based engineering disciplines: Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Agricultural Engineering, Architectural Engineering, Industrial Engineering, etc. These two biology-related engineering disciplines are both evolving, but their communities are not showing signs of merging. While the similarity between these names is admittedly confusing (especially in a world where we commonly collapse "biological" to "bio"), in this case forcing a merger is likely to alienate professionals in one or the other of these two legitimate and distinct engineering fields. 64.178.106.74 (talk) 23:31, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

• Just wanted to say that the above post is hilarious. Mr. (or Ms.) Professional Society above dare not give his or her name, and has never contributed to Wikipedia beyond the above post. Genius! There are also no sources given for the distinction he cites between bioengineering and biological engineering. At Berkeley, for example, there is no "biological engineering" department but rather the "Department of Bioengineering," while at MIT, there is the "Department of Biological Engineering," which offers the graduate degree of "bioengineering." Finally, according to the BioE department at MIT, they say that "[bioengineering] is a term often used to encompass facets of both Biological Engineering and Biomedical Engineering" [3]. I support the merger, but encourage cited perspectives on the topic (rather than appeals to authority and personal involvement in the field). --chodges (talk) 22:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Need to Establish Hierarchy of Sciences & Fields of Study

I support the merger, but with a caution that neither article refers to the hierarchy of sciences & field of study. As a chemical engineer I was taught that chemical engineering began near the 1900's as a merger of paper science and mechanical engineering. As organic chemistry evolved and chemical reactions were required to produce products chemical engineering became a field in its own right, as mechanical engineering lacked the more in-depth study of chemistry and paper engineering dealt with a specific product line only.

According to Dr. Schuler of Cornell University & Dr. Kargi of Washington University in their book Bioprocess Engineering, the term bioengineering is the umbrella from which all subsequent sciences follow under (pg 2 of Bioprocess Engineering Basic Concepts 2nd ed ISBN 0-13-081908-5). Bioengineering embodies both the work of agricultural engineers as well as biomedical engineers and biotechnology. "Biotechnology usually implies the use or development of methods of direct genetic manipulation for a socially desirable goal." "Bioengineering is a broad title and would include work on medical and agricultural systems; its practitioners include agricultural, electrical, mechanical, industrial, environmental, and chemical engineers, and others. Biological engineering is similar but emphasizes applications to plants and animals. Biochemical engineering has usually meant the extension of chemical engineering principles to systems using a biological catalyst to bring about desired chemical transformations. It is often subdivided into bioreaction engineering and bioseparations. Biomedical engineering has been considered to be totally separate from biochemical engineering, although the boundary between the two is increasingly vague, particularly in the areas of cell surface receptors and animal cell culture. Another relevant terms is biomolecular engineering, which has been defined by the National Institute of Health as "...research at the interface of biology and chemical engineering and is focused at the molecular level." (all quotes from pg 2 Schuler/Kargi Bioprocess Engineering Basic Concepts 2nd ed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by HOPeterson (talk • contribs) 15:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki link to WIkiversity

{{Wikiversity|Topic:Bioengineering}} could be added. Or a link could be added in the see also section or somewhere else to Wikiversity:Topic:Bioengineering. Emesee (talk) 00:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 27 September 2008, at 22:54.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Talk:Bioengineering".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Talk:Bioengineering

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.