Welcome from the Chair

The BME Department was created in March 2009 as a platform for students and faculty to excel this model by establishing a synergetic interface between Research, Education and Entrepreneurship. We offered the degree of Master and Bachelor in BME and all courses are taugth in English. The Department motto is: High Quality, Sustainability and Usefulness. Our long term goal is to transform the BME Department into a Center of Excellence in Biomedical Engineering for South-East Asia. It will be built from the Vietnamese roots and utilizing Western approaches to address the urgent needs of the country and prepare new generations of graduates, capable of contributing to global research in the life sciences. We built an infrastructure and operating system that stimulate students to perform well beyond the academic requirements, give faculty members excellent working conditions to investigate issues that exist only in Vietnam and offer industrial investors excellent opportunities to expand their fields of activities and profits with original medical devices made in Vietnam. We aim to establish our reputation for excellence and attract well-renowned entrepreneurs and researchers, especially among the ranks of the Vietnamese and other of South-East Asia Diaspora postdoctoral graduates.

The Department activities span over 4 orientations:

1. Medical Instrumentation focusing on the telemedicine, and the design of homecare devices for outpatients and advanced medical equipment providing rapid, automated and reliable diagnostics for healthcare professionals to satisfy the great and urgent needs of the country, and to bring synergy between traditional engineering technologies, the life sciences and medicine;
2. Biomedical Signal and Image Processing focusing on the applications of medical devices and developments of new research methodologies and algorithms to investigate human biological processes and provide an early detection of diseases;
3. Pharmaceutical Engineering focusing on the investigations of the mechanism of drug delivery using nanotechnology to enhance the efficacy of the treatment of tumors and the imaging diagnostics as well as the development of new drug delivery devices;
4. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative in Medicine focusing on the development of new biological and bioinductive materials, and the use of stem cells, genes to repair or replace damaged tissues and organs and to use in biological implants.

We are working on the implemenation of a new orientation: Entrepreneurship in Biomedical Engineering focusing on the developments of clinical engineering and practice of effective methods to bring into the market medical devices newly developed in academic laboratories, to build a medical device industry appropriate for Vietnam and developing countries, and to manage healthcare settings.

At the undergraduate level, we educate students to become:

• Clinical engineers who are well versed in the principles and operations of the medical equipment used in the hospitals to help physicians in clinical treatments as well as in research works, or
• Entrepreneurs capable of developing and putting on the market new medical devices suitable for Vietnam, or
• Well prepared young scientists ready to pursue higher education in Vietnam and abroad.

At the graduate level we prepare the graduates to either:

• Take the lead in the health private sectors by having a focused vision and solid knowledge in engineering and entrepreneurship, and be capable of developing and putting on the market new medical devices, managing healthcare establishments, and establishing startup companies; or
• Pursue higher education in Vietnam or abroad in embarking on research at the interface between technology and health science or to be well versed in the principles and operations of the medical equipment used in the hospitals to help physicians in clinical treatments as well as in advanced research.

The Department has developed strong relationship with local professional schools (Medical, Pharmacy and Dental), hospitals and the medical device industry, and has received good support from education leadership. Beside the generous and constant resources provided by IU to establish the foundation of the Department, we have recently received a grant of VND 17 billion (an equivalent of US$ 1 million) from the Vietnam National University of Ho Chi Minh City to enhance the capacity building of our faculty.

The Department starts receiving support from outside such as:

1. Shimadzu Inc. (Japan) and its representative in Vietnam,Trung Sơn, signed an MOU for the scientific collaboration and donated to the Department an amout of VND 700 million (~ USD 35,000) for the development of education and research activities.
2. National Instruments (USA) donated to the Department 4 sets of lab equipment and Labview worth VND 600 million (~USD 30,000) for research and teaching.
3. Center of Medical Diagnostics MEDIC offered several used medical equipment for teaching.
4. Center of Public Health (CHAC) collaborated with the Department to open a sleep study lab there. Our students and faculty work alongside with patients and doctors to investigate the sleep apnea.
5. Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) offered us many grants for our faculty to study in the famous American universities and for the US faculty to come teach in our Department.
6. University of Houston (Texas) offered our Department many powerful servers and other equipment for research in Computational Surgery.
7. Ho Chi Minh City Medical Equipment Association signed an agreement to collaborate with the Department in the following activities: Education, Research, Transfer of Technology, Production, Quality Control, Business and Public Relations.
8. A donor offered to the Department an E-Library that contains BME books.

We are working on numerous proposals for research projects and have also received support from faculty of our counterparts in the U.S. to reinforce our teaching.

The Department is hiring more faculty and is actively seeking more international collaborations. If you have graduated with a Ph.D. degree from a renowned institution in BME, please join us either as a full time or a part time faculty. If you are affiliated with a university abroad and desire to teach or conduct research in BME, you are cordially invited to be a Visiting Faculty or Scholar in our Department. This is a great time for the development of BME in Vietnam. Within a young and energetic environment in our Department your collaborations will be greatly appreciated and you will quickly be able to make a visible impact here.

We would also like to make an appeal to international investors. We designed a family of homecare Medical Devices for Telemedicine. This is a great opportunities to tackle the virgin Vietnamese and developing countries with high quality made in Vietnam products.

We would like to extend our invitation to prospective students, Vietnamese and international, to join us. You will discover a friendly and exciting environment that aims toward excellence and stability. You will have opportunities to study an emerging field and learn to solve real world issues. You will be nurtured to develop your dreams, transform your dreams into visions and make your visions into concrete actions.

In the mean time, please peruse our webpage.

Thank you and I am looking forward to hearing from you soon,

Nguyễn Thị Hiệp

Email: nthiep@hcmiu.edu.vn