BME 5780 Engineering for Women’s Health
Fall 2025
- Description: Engineering approaches have many uses in improving women’s health across the lifespan and across the globe, from basic science understanding through to clinical implementation at the point of care. This course will include female reproductive anatomy and physiology across the lifespan and touch on several challenges and pathologies in women’s health. Topics will include menstruation, contraception, endometriosis, pain, pregnancy complications, sexually transmitted infections, infertility, pelvic floor disorders, cancers of the female reproductive tract, menopause, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis. There will be a focus on unmet needs in women’s health based on different contexts of care, including well-funded tertiary medical centers, US healthcare deserts, and underserved settings within the US and around the world. The current clinical standard of care and emerging engineering research and startup technologies for each topic will be covered and enhanced by inclusion of expert women’s health engineering speakers with backgrounds in academic research, women’s health engineering startups, large companies, and device manufacturing. Students will complete case studies, one business pitch for a women’s health technology of their choosing, and one in-depth project on a women’s health engineering topic of their choosing.
- Open to undergraduates and graduate students
Reproductive Science 5000 Human Reproductive Physiology
This course is designed to give students a comprehensive foundation in human reproductive physiology through a variety of learning modalities. The course focuses primarily on normal physiology of human reproductive systems, although some lecturers will introduce pathologies and/or relevant animal models as a way to strengthen subject matter understanding. This course aims to deepen student knowledge of the human reproductive systems down to the cellular and molecular levels to 1) connect them with their own physiology, and 2) broaden their understanding of the biological systems integral to the human experience. The course material will provide students with foundational knowledge in reproductive physiology that will help prepare them for medical school, biomedical research, and careers in the field of reproductive sciences. Although primarily lecture-based, this course also includes discussion of peer-reviewed journal articles and dialog with lecturers regarding pre-assigned questions. These additional modalities are intended to give students an opportunity to apply their new knowledge in the classroom. Lecture topics will occur in three modules of varying lengths throughout the semester. To give students the most up-to-date knowledge, lectures will be presented by experts on the given topic of the day, and thus students should be prepared for differing lecture styles from each lecturer.
- Module I – “Development to Reproduction” – gonads and gametogenesis, puberty, hormonal cycles and neuroendocrinology, fertilization, infertility, assisted reproductive technology, and contraception
- Module II – “Embryogenesis and Gestation” – early embryo, implantation, placentation, embryogenesis, maternal adaptation to pregnancy, and fetal programming
- Module III – “Parturition and Beyond” – parturition, lactation, early parental behavior, menopause and reproductive aging, transgender health and reproductive considerations, social determinants of reproductive health, and the role of reproductive sciences in society. Prerequisites: BIOL 2960, BIOL 2970, and at least two advanced Biology courses.