Is it worth it going into biomedical engineering? Are there any major companies that do research in that field? How hard is it to find a job?

Whether or not a major is “worth it” depends on your interests and goals.  Are you interested in engineering? Like solving medical problems (be it on the nanoscale or macroscopic level)?  Is income or job security important to you?  Biomedical engineering is a really broad field.  As you can see from the biographies of the engineers featured in this website, biomedical engineers do a wide variety of jobs.  Depending on your specialization, interests, and experience, you can look for jobs in thousands of companies.  I will not name any particular company, but if you simply google for the top biotech companies, top pharmaceutical companies, and top medical devices companies, you’ll come across many household names.  Besides that, many companies that have their core business in a completely unrelated field (e.g. energy, electronics, chemicals) would own large subsidiaries in the medical field (such as hospital equipment or laboratory equipment/disposables).  Typically you would know these companies for their other products or services, but in fact they also have a great need for biomedical engineers.  The ease of finding a job also depends on the same factors I listed above.  You need to look at the right place and have the courses/grades to back you up.  In general, having a degree in engineering gives you better job security than most other majors, but at the end it’s based on the individual.  So study hard, explore, network, be inquisitive but not overbearing, and you’ll find the perfect niche for yourself.

Answer from Stephanie Cheung

Hi there,

If biomedical engineering is interesting to you, then I think that it is absolutely worth the effort! Biomedical engineering is not a new field, but because technology is changing so quickly and getting cheaper to access, many new companies and jobs are springing up all over the world. Besides the big and established companies, there are also lots of start-ups doing really interesting things in biomedical engineering. You might also consider pursuing an academic research career in biomedical engineering like me! I work for a lab at a university rather than a traditional company like the kind that you may be used to hearing about.

Best of luck!