Thesis format
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.
Who is eligible to be a faculty thesis mentor?
The mentor needs to be a faculty member (either career-line or tenure-line) at the University of Utah conducting biomedical research. Projects done outside of the University of Utah will require having a BME faculty member serve as your mentor. Typically the BME Honors Liason serves as this mentor.
Are collaborative theses permitted?
A collaborative thesis is one where an Honors student works with one or more collaborators on the thesis.
Honors theses in BME are written as a single author thesis. This does not preclude working within a team to generate the research that is the basis for the thesis; however, a student is expected to describe the work that they were directly involved in conducting. This type of collaboration is typical of BME research where many projects are parts of larger sponsored research projects.
For supportive work from others, the thesis must clearly describe the contributions of others work. This is typically done in the methods section of the thesis. But may also be appropriate in the results and the discussion when the thesis work relies on results from others to fully explain the author's own findings.
Are joint theses permitted?
A joint thesis is a single thesis that satisfies the requirements of multiple majors.
No.
How does the Honors Thesis relate to other aspects for the major?
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. 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.