History of the Department
The Department has its roots in two research groups at Imperial that were pioneers in bioengineering.
The Physiological Flow Studies Unit was founded within the Department of Aeronautics in 1966, making it one of the first interdisciplinary biomechanics groups in the world. The group rapidly gained an international reputation in the areas of arterial and respiratory fluid mechanics, and particularly for its pioneering work relating blood flow and vascular mass transport to atherosclerosis.
The Engineering in Medicine Laboratory was founded in 1963 as a research group in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The group developed a strong reputation in biomedical signal processing. It later developed activities in the areas of ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging.
The two groups merged in 1989 to form the Centre for Biological & Medical Systems. Due to the generosity of the Bagrit Trust, a dedicated building, the Sir Leon Bagrit Centre, was opened in the summer of 1991. An MSc course was started that year, and runs to this day with an annual intake of around 80 students.
The Centre obtained Departmental status in 1998 and was renamed the Department of Bioengineering in spring 2001. It introduced its undergraduate course in Biomedical Engineering in October 2002; intake rapidly grew to around 60 students per year, of whom half are from overseas.
The Department maintains a strong interest in arterial and respiratory fluid mechanics in relation to disease and has expanded its biomechanics research to include ocular and musculoskeletal mechanics. Work on MRI and ultrasound also continues today, combined with a strong interest in medical image analysis and informatics. There has additionally been growth into the areas of microbionics, biosensors, and modelling complex systems. The Department continues to lead the development of cross-disciplinary research in novel areas, exemplified by its recent appointment of staff in the field of neurotechnology.
The list of PhD theses gives a glimpse of the scope of research in the Department and its forebears over four decades.
