Departmental Thesis Requirements

Traditional long-format thesis. The thesis will have to meet requirements for content, written quality, length, and format. The content must demonstrate research expertise in BME, command of relevant scholarship, and the results must contribute to BME scholarship. The thesis will be of publication quality to recieve final approval. The length will be at least 25 pages not counting references in the traditional honors thesis format. References will be done in a IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering print format.

How does the Honors Thesis relate to other aspects of the major, like a Capstone Project?

All BME students conduct research (university or industry) and are involved in a 1.5 year long research and thesis writing classes (BME 4990, 4991, & 4992). The research and thesis writing classes teach the basics of writing research papers amongst other communication skills. Appropriate honors level projects from these classes can be expanded upon to serve as the basis for the honors thesis, which is completed in BME 4999.

Departmental Coursework Supporting Thesis

The timing of the honors thesis typically overlaps the timing of completing the BME thesis class with both BME 4999 and 4992 being taken in the same semester.

Additional Information for Students

The “honors” designation is a privilege, reflects excellence, and is a distinction for the Department.
The Department of Biomedical Engineering's expectation is therefore that the final product of your research and your growth in the “Honors” designation is reflected in your thesis. Therefore, this thesis product should be thoroughly researched, rich in important new data and technical detail, professionally presented, and competently represented by you, its author. It is not a reformatting of the BME Senior Projects report. The Honors thesis goes “above and beyond” this capstone BME project in data, depth and detail.
Writing a successful thesis is a completely attainable goal, but because there are strict deadlines involved. You need to plan out your timeline to achieve thesis submission success.