[Rice University] Bioengineering Department Image Collection

The Rice Department of Bioengineering was established in July 1997 and formed with the help of a Whitaker Foundation Development Award. Of the original twelve faculty, seven held primary appointments: Larry McIntire (chairman), Tony Mikos, Ka-Yia San, Jackie Shanks, Jennifer West, Kyriacos Zygourakis, and Mike Berry, holding the joint appointment with Baylor College of Medicine. The five professors with secondary appointments were John Clark, Timothy Harrigan, David Hellums, Joel Moake, and Frank Tittel. By 2008, the department had grown to nineteen faculty members and eleven multidisciplinary joint appointments with science and engineering departments at Rice, as well as forty adjunct and affiliated faculty members, primarily from the Texas Medical Center. The student population has grown to more than 115 doctoral students.

By 2008 the total research expenditures were $12.6 million. Since its founding, the Department of Bioengineering at Rice has consistently been ranked among the nation’s top ten bioengineering/biomedical engineering graduate programs.