February 25, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN RI
Good question! These names are relatively new, and different groups
of people have made them up at different institutions. If some of
these people are engineers, or if a pre-existing engineering division
or department moves into biological or medical applications, you can
bet the word "engineering" will be in the name of their new group.
"Biomedical" implies to me that medical applications are at least
hoped for. "Biotechnology" might not restrict itself to medical
applications. The multiplicity of names throughout the biomedical
realm makes it hard to find people or to know what kind of research
is being done at an institution - you can't just look up a familiar
name for a field without running the risk that it's called something
else at that institution. You have to back up the organizational
tree to an umbrella heading - life sciences or something really broad
like that - but even so you might miss bioengineering hidden in an
engineering division. And then if you want to compare what research
is really being done, you have to look at the individual research
groups.

The good part is that the multiplicity of names is a sign of growth
and innovation.