A minimum of 52 semester hours of graduate work is required (beyond the Bachelor's degree). The student must meet the Graduate School's residency requirement at UNC-CH or NC State as appropriate. An advisory committee chaired by a member of the joint BME graduate faculty will help the student develop a plan of work tailored to fit the student's career goals. The student's advisory committee and the institutional Director of  Graduate Studies must approve the Plan of Work.

All students are required to take the Introduction to Biomedical Engineering Seminar (BMME 400).  All students are expected to take a Research Experiencein BME (BMME 900, BMME 910L, or BMME 920L at UNC-CH; BME 693, BME 590R, or BME 893 at NC State), eight hours of graduate-level life sciences (BMME 589/790 or BMME 570/770 at UNC-CH or PHY 503/504 at NC State), nine hours of engineering core topics, three hours of graduate-level statistics, and six hours of graduate-level mathematics. The student's advisory committee may allow exemptions from some of these requirements if students have equivalent prior coursework.  Credit is not given for exempted courses. Therefore, other courses must be substituted in the program of study to replace the required hours. Prerequisites are required for many courses.  Exemptions from taking prerequisites may be requested of the course instructor.

Students should refer to the curriculum summary for the Ph.D. degree for details on all current requirements.

Ph.D. students may include a minor in the plan of study.  This is a separate area of study (usually 15 credits) that may relate to the main research topic.  The purpose of the minor is to broaden the student's educational experience.  Students may pursue minors in programs at either UNC or NC State.  The policies of the minor-granting program and institution apply.  Students should be aware of these policies before electing to pursue a minor.

All Ph.D. students are also required to have some teaching or lecturing experience, at least two class periods taught or seminars presented. Students aspiring to an academic career or a research career requiring presentation skills are encouraged to take advantage of teaching effectiveness programs and tools available at each institution.

During the first year of study, a Ph.D. student should consider the selection of a research topic.  This selection should be made with deliberation since many hours of work will be required to complete a dissertation. Most often, students select the research area of the faculty member who originally provides them with financial support. Consequently, students and their advisory committees should consider their long-term research interests carefully before they accept these appointments.
 

DISSERTATION

The Ph.D. dissertation is a document whose purpose is to demonstrate that the candidate is capable of conducting original research.  The dissertation should demonstrate that the Ph.D. student has the ability to formulate a research problem, state why it is important, and put into perspective how the proposed work fits in with current knowledge.  The dissertation must show the force of the logic behind the approach to the solution.  Finally, it must show the results clearly and state the new knowledge derived from the study.  The dissertation research must be of publishable quality.

The student and the student's advisor should jointly select a five (minimum) member committee.  This committee will administer the written and oral portions of the doctoral preliminary examination, oversee the dissertation proposal and research progress, approve the dissertation and administer the final oral dissertation defense.  The committee should be one that can best advise the student on the research topic identified.   A majority of members must be BME faculty.  The remaining members may come from other departments, other universities, and industry.  Qualified individuals who are not members of the institutional Graduate Faculty (at either institution) may be appointed to the advisory committee by the institutional Director of Graduate Studies with approval of the Graduate School.  The committee is expected to include at least three faculty members who hold primary, secondary (joint) or adjunct BME appointments, of which at least one holds a primary core BME appointment.  The committee is also expected to include one or two members who are from outside the BME department.  If the research advisor does not hold a primary core BME appointment, then a committee member who holds a primary core BME appointment will serve as a co-chair (the "academic co-chair" or "academic advisor") of the committee.
 

TEACHING REQUIREMENT

Each Ph.D. student must demonstrate to their committee at or before their final defense that they have delivered at least two lectures before undergraduate or graduate classes. The course instructor should evaluate the student's presentation and provide helpful feedback. Plans to meet the teaching requirement must be presented and approved by the Advisory Committee at the time of the Doctoral Oral Examination.  In some cases, the presentation of long-form research seminars to a large and varied audience will be accepted for this requirement.

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