Biomedical Micro- and Nanodevices, At least 120 cr

At the interface between engineering and health sciences

The biomedical engineering industry is an increasingly important, global high-tech sector. In Finland, the HealthTech industry is especially strong. With the emergence of numerous small enterprises, the fields of biomedical sciences and engineering are rapidly expanding and offer diverse career options. This programme provides you with a solid understanding of the challenges related to biomedical and health sciences. You will become familiar with advanced technologies at the interface between engineering and health sciences and can develop innovative solutions to solve these challenges. You will be able to demonstrate critical thinking and professionalism and pursue a career in industry, a hospital or continue your studies towards a doctoral degree. You may also be a natural-born entrepreneur and launch your own start-up.

Biomedical Micro- and Nanodevices

The specialization Biomedical Micro- and Nanodevices focuses on biomedical devices and systems with micro- and nanoscale components, including microsensors, microactuators, microrobots, microfluidics, micro-optics as well as wireless signal and power transfer technologies. If you want to work on e.g. portable devices, wearables, biosensors, or microfluidic chips, this is a good specialization for you. In this specialization, you will learn practical skills in cleanroom microfabrication, characterization of microsensors and actuators, microscopy, and theoretical background to understand physics at the microscale.

Miniaturisation has been one of the important technological megatrends in the past decades. Miniaturisation is a key approach to make devices and processes sustainable: by making devices and components smaller, we can make more measurements by using smaller amounts of reagents and samples, more computations with less energy, obtain more data in a shorter time, and make more devices from the same amount of raw materials.

Within Finland, this specialization is unique in its interdisciplinarity: you learn the fundamentals of microsystems technology but also its biomedical applications in one whole. This gives you a strong background for designing micro- and nanodevices, but also to understand how these devices can be used in biomedical applications to the benefit of the patient or the user.

Career opportunities

After you graduate with this specialization, your future job might be to develop a wearable sensor device for monitoring physiological signals, targeting either patient monitoring or wellness tracking applications. Or you might continue career in academia, researching organ-on-a-chip type of devices. Organ-on-a-chip devices are microfluidic cell culture chips, mimicking the activities of entire organs and thus providing a novel approach for developing new medicines, understanding disease mechanisms, and studying toxicological effects of chemical compounds in vitro. The job market prospects for microtechnologies in Europe remains strong. Recently, EU has launched the European Chips Act, which aims to invest €43 billion in the field, meaning there will be many job openings in related fields within the near future.

Through the courses in the specialization Biomedical Micro- and Nanodevices you will learn to design, model, simulate, test, and apply microsensors, microactuators, microfluidic and soft-robotic structures and understands their physical principles and the specifications of corresponding commercial products. You will also learn how to combine microfabrication techniques with biomedical engineering for biomedical applications such as cell technologies.