Biomechanics applies statics, dynamics and mechanics of materials to the human body. The statewide description is explicitly musculoskeletal: the fundamentals of human musculoskeletal physiology and anatomy, and the computation of mechanical forces as applied to orthopaedic biomechanics.
⚠ It is the most approachable of the biomedical engineering specialisms for a student with a mechanical background, and the least approachable for one without. Free-body diagrams of a hip joint are still free-body diagrams; what is new is that the geometry is irregular, the materials are anisotropic and alive, and the loads are estimated rather than given.
Carried by four Florida public institutions.
Named on the Biomedical Engineer career path. Biomechanics is the route into orthopaedic and prosthetic device work, rehabilitation engineering, sports and ergonomics consulting, and injury and forensic analysis. ⚠ It is also the cluster that reads most clearly to mechanical employers, which matters given how small the biomedical occupation is.
⚠⚠ And a word about level, because it applies to every course in this prefix. O*NET reports that only 43% of employers treat a bachelor’s as sufficient for this occupation, against 26% naming a master’s and 13% a doctorate — by a wide margin the highest graduate expectation of any engineering discipline. Choose your upper-level courses with that in mind: the instrumentation, signals and imaging cluster is the most employable at bachelor’s level, while the tissue, neural and BioMEMS cluster largely assumes you intend to continue.
The state records the gate as BME4100, the biomaterials number used by FAU and FIU only. This course is carried by FAMU, Florida State, FIU and UNF.
| Carrier of this course | Carries BME4100? |
|---|---|
| FIU | yes |
| FAMU | ⚠ no — numbers biomaterials BME3100 |
| Florida State | ⚠ no — numbers biomaterials BME3100 |
| UNF | ⚠ no — carries no biomaterials course in this prefix |
⚠⚠ FIU contributed the prerequisite and it describes FIU’s curriculum. That is a known and common defect shape, not a claim that the other programmes are under-gated — they gate this course on statics, mechanics of materials and anatomy instead. Read the gate from your own catalogue.
UNF carries this number as Mechanics of the Human Body while awarding no biomedical engineering degree. ⚠ That makes it a genuinely useful elective for a UNF mechanical engineering student — and it is not the start of a biomedical engineering degree there. A student intending that degree should read the Biomedical Engineer path before planning around it.
Biomedical engineering is awarded at bachelor’s level by six Florida public institutions in five cities: UF (115 degrees a year), FIU (79), Florida State (36), USF (29), Florida Gulf Coast (21) and Florida A&M (4). Florida State and Florida A&M share the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, one joint college in Tallahassee, which is why their records in this prefix are identical down to the title.
⚠⚠ UCF and FAU award biomedical engineering at master’s and doctoral level and no bachelor’s at all, and UNF and Florida Polytechnic carry courses in the prefix without awarding the degree. St. Petersburg College is the only Florida College System institution carrying any BME course.
⚠ So a carrier count in this prefix overstates how many independent programmes exist — a course carried by “FAMU and FSU” is one programme’s course. Read anything stated here about content as a description of a small number of specific curricula rather than a Florida-wide norm. The Biomedical Engineer career path sets out what this means for choosing where to study.
This repository checks every course-looking token in a statewide prerequisite against who actually carries that course. The BME prefix returns the worst result measured anywhere in Florida: of 100 active undergraduate records, 75 name at least one course in their prerequisite field, and fifteen of those 75 — one in five — name a course that no Florida public institution carries. The same test on criminal justice returns about 2%.
⚠⚠ The likeliest cause is age, not carelessness. Biomedical engineering is Florida’s newest and fastest-growing engineering discipline; its programmes were built recently and renumbered as they matured, and the statewide record kept the numbers that were proposed, used briefly or retired along the way. The practical consequence is simply that in this prefix you should read the gate from your own institution’s catalogue every time.
⚠⚠ Check that your programme is accredited by ABET’s ENGINEERING Accreditation Commission, not the engineering technology commission — the difference is two extra years of experience toward a Professional Engineer licence, and accreditation attaches to a named programme at a named institution rather than to a course list.
Few biomedical engineers license: device manufacturing falls under the industrial exemption. ⚠ The exception is clinical engineering in hospitals and healthcare facility work. Sit the FE examination in your final year regardless — it is inexpensive as a student and expensive to recreate later. Under s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes, an approved engineering curriculum needs four years of qualifying experience toward the PE.
Generated September 19, 2026 · Updated September 19, 2026