The Biomedical Engineering program at Rutgers University was initially established in 1965 as a track within electrical engineering, offering M.S. degrees with a biomedical engineering emphasis. In 1986, the State of New Jersey formally chartered the Rutgers Department of Biomedical Engineering as an independent entity within the School of Engineering with exclusive responsibility for granting M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering. The Department developed its graduate programs in collaboration with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) to provide a strong foundation in the basic biomedical and clinical sciences along with rigorous training in engineering fundamentals. The undergraduate program in biomedical engineering was inaugurated in 1991 under the “applied sciences” option within the School of Engineering; a formal undergraduate BS degree in BME was approved by the University in 1997 and by the State in 1999. The graduate program in biomedical engineering, which is jointly administered by Rutgers and UMDNJ, has grown remarkably, and currently hosts over 80 faculty from the Rutgers science and engineering departments and UMDNJ's basic biomedical science and clinical science departments.

The primary educational mission of the department is to provide outstanding BS, MS, and PhD level training in the following critical areas of biomedical engineering and technology:

• Molecular, Cellular, and Nanosystems Bioengineering
• Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
• Biomechanics and Rehabilitation Engineering
• Physiologic Systems and Bioinstrumentation
• Computational Bioengineering and Biomedical Imaging