The University of California, Irvine’s biomedical engineering department is looking to do more with Orange County’s medical device sector,a prime job market for its graduates.
The department, particularly its 10-member, industry-heavy advisory board, plans to work on ways to get its graduates to interact more with companies, said Steven George, the 5-year-old department’s chair and its William J. Link professor of biomedical engineering.
“We’re at a point now where we would like the board to help our undergraduates find positions here in Orange County,” George said.
Possible ideas to foster that link, he said, include a symposium or an undergraduate research day where students and companies can meet and interact with each other. Such efforts could help the department “place more of the students in Orange County,” George said.
“I think the time is perfect for that, now that our programs have matured to the point that we’re graduating 80 to 90 students every year,” he said.
Many of those graduates already have found jobs at local device companies, according to George.
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UC Irvine reached out to medical device makers earlier this decade when it created its department. Companies have been involved in efforts from program development to fundraising.
Among the donors is Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics Inc., a maker of eye surgery devices.
The company “has given us substantial financial support over a five-year commitment, and we’ve used that gift money to support our young faculty and our incoming graduate students,” George said.
Irvine-based Edwards Lifesciences Corp., a heart valve maker, “gave us a huge gift,” he said.
Last month, Edwards gave $5 million to UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering, which includes the biomedical department, to start a research and development center for heart devices. The department will direct the Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology.
Beyond just funding, industry representatives have a hand in designing teaching topics, which helps ensure students will get skills they will need in the business world.
A two-quarter undergraduate course focuses on teamwork, something George said “the private sector really seeks out.”
And companies get involved with the teaching, supplying mentors who team up with students on a six-month exercise that culminates with a mini-symposium.
University biomedical engineering brings research that could find its way into commercial products, said Stu Foster, a former department advisory board member who is Edwards’ corporate vice president of technology and discovery.
“We believe that a strong biomedical engineering department at UCI is a crucial element in having the right infrastructure to support both large and small medical device companies in Orange County,” Foster said.
Today, the department’s board includes Jane Rady, vice president of strategy and technology for Advanced Medical; and J. Andy Corley, chief executive of Eyeonics Inc., an Aliso Viejo-based maker of eye surgery products.
The board’s chairman is Bill Link, a longtime investor in early stage medical device companies and managing director at the Newport Beach office of Menlo Park-based Versant Ventures.
“Our advisory board has been instrumental in helping us develop our program,” George said.
Plans are to add as many as eight to 10 more members, George said.
“There are chunks of Orange County that aren’t being represented,” he said. “That’s going to be our primary goal this year.”
Some notable companies missing from the department’s board: Fullerton-based Beckman Coulter Inc., a maker of medical testing gear and supplies; Irvine’s B. Braun Medical Inc., a maker of intravenous solution kits that’s part of Germany’s B. Braun Melsungen AG; and Alcon Laboratories Inc., an eye surgery products maker with a sizable Irvine operation.
The department has 12 full-time professors plus four others who split their time with other departments. George said he’s looking to hire three more full-time professors this year.
“What we have found is that the interest by the students has been enormous and has really outpaced the growth of the faculty,” he said.
The department now has some 450 undergraduates, 90 doctoral students and 30 students pursuing master’s degrees. The first graduating class, made up of students who transferred from other departments as sohphomores, finished in 2005.
Of graduating biomedical engineering seniors, roughly a third attend graduate school, another third attempt to pursue medical school admission and the other third go directly into companies, according to George.
“One thing we could do better is definitely track our alums,” he said.
UCI originally established its biomedical engineering center in 1998 after the university won a $3 million grant from the Whitaker Foundation of Arlington, Va. Whitaker’s grant provided money for equipment, renovations, salaries, scholarships and fellowships through 2003.
