The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is one of three campuses in the University of Illinois system. Located in the heart of Chicago, the UIC campus hosts a diverse constituency of students, attracted by the quality of UIC programs and the metropolitan setting.

The UIC Department of Bioengineering was founded in 1965 with the creation of the new Chicago-Circle campus of the University of Illinois. It received one of the first ten NIH Bioengineering Training Grants. The first undergraduate degrees were awarded in 1969. The graduate program was established in 1970, and in 1973 the first graduate degree was granted. In 1976, the department received its first ABET accreditation. The department has a tradition of strong programs in biomechanics, biomaterials, and biomedical imaging, and continues to offer excellent opportunities in these research areas. The department is also experiencing growth and development in the emerging fields of cell and tissue engineering, neural engineering, and bioinformatics. Current enrollment totals over 200 graduate and undergraduate students. New faculty and facilities are being supported by a current Special Opportunity grant from the Whitaker Foundation.

There are currently twelve full-time faculty members, ten quarter-time faculty members, and 71 adjunct faculty members in many departments throughout the Colleges of Associated Health Professions, Dentistry, Engineering, Medicine, and Pharmacy. Dr. Richard Magin, the current Department Head, was appointed in 1998. Dr. John Hetling, a UIC bioengineering graduate and postdoctoral fellow in the Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Departments (neural engineering) joined the department in the Fall of 1998. In 1999, Dr. Jie Liang (bioinformatics) started as an assistant professor in bioengineering. Dr. Liang did graduate studies at UIUC in biophysics and computer science, postdoctoral studies at NCSA in computational geometry and at Minnesota in structural biology, and has worked for two years at Smith-Kline Beecham Pharmaceutics. Professor William O'Neill has worked at UIC for the past 37 years. An expert in modeling biological systems, he regularly teaches courses and participates in student thesis defense committees. Drs. Michael Cho and Susan McCormick joined the bioengineering faculty in the area of cell and tissue engineering during the Fall 2000 semester. Susan McCormick received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington. Michael Cho received his Ph.D. in Biophysics/Physics in 1991 from Drexel University and recently held the position of Research Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.

In the Fall of 2001, the department welcomed four new faculty members. Drs. Bin He and David Schneeweis specialize in Neural Engineering. Bin He received his Ph.D. in Bioelectrical Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and completed postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University - M.I.T. Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He previously held positions as an Associate Professor in the UIC Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, prior to his appointment as an Associate Professor in Bioengineering. David Schneeweis joined the Bioengineering department as an Assistant Professor. He received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Michigan and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Opthamology at the University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Michael Stroscio joined the department as a full Professor in the field of Cell and Tissue Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University. Most recently, he was a Fellow and Principal Scientist at the U.S. Army Research Office and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering at Duke University and in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University. In the spring of 2002, Dr. Stroscio was appointed Director of Graduate Studies. Dr. Yang Dai holds a Ph.D. in Mathematical Programming from the University of Tsukuba in Japan. She joined the Bioengineering department as an Assistant Professor in the growing field of Bioinformatics. In 2002, the department will welcome two new faculty members. Dr. Patrick Rousche joined the deparment as an Assistant Professor specializing in neural engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Utah. Dr. Hui Lu will be an Assistant Professor teaching bioinformatics starting in Fall 2002. Dr. Lu is an alumni of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has extensive experience in biomedical functional imaging and computations.

The Bioengineering department has many programs in place to provide public service and outreach to UIC students and the Chicago community. In the Summer of 2000, the department held its first annual "Experience Bioengineering" Summer Camp. The camp, sponsored by a grant from the Whitaker Foundation, is open to high school students and teachers in the Chicago area. Students attended UIC campus and industry tours and presented their own projects to a panel of peers and faculty. Due to its success, a second annual camp was held in summer 2002. The UIC chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) provides an outlet for students to meet and discuss topics in Biomedical Engineering. BMES also hosts a program entitled "Big Brothers, Big Sisters" which seeks to match UIC undergraduate students with their graduate peers. In Fall 2001, the first UIC Scientific Undergraduate Research Journal (SURJ) was published. SURJ allows UIC students to engage in scholarly discourse and get an early start on their research careers.