Currently two lecture-based courses are offered in biomedical engineering: first, "Introduction to Biomedical Engineering" is a survey course open to all science and engineering students at the university. The other course, "Biomedical Instrumentation", is designed for senior-level electrical engineering students. The objective of this project is to secure the necessary equipment to realize an effective laboratory component for each of these courses. For the introductory course, physiography units enable the student to measure and analyze a variety of electrophysiological and transduced signals from the human body. Aside from valuable "hands-on" experimentation, these units would provide a unique perspective of critical biomedical engineering design issues like patient safety, cost, and interference suppression. For the instrumentation course, the personal computers and input/output boards enable the student to design and build a complete electrophysiological data acquisition, display, and analysis system. The student develops skills applicable to a large variety of engineering problems. The realization of these two laboratory components would significantly enhance the quality of undergraduate science and engineering education.
