Specializations Planning

The 'specializations' curriculum was designed to allow for greater flexibility and choice within the BMEG technical electives list. The curriculum requires that students complete 21 credits of technical electives from across five themed areas of biomedical engineering. The Biomedical Engineering program is accredited by the Accreditation Board of Engineers Canada and the program is designed to meet accreditation requirements. As such, our program must meet a minimum of Engineering Science and Engineering Design content, quantified for each course as a single number called the Accreditation Unit (AU).

Steps for Planning Technical Electives

1. Choosing Courses

Students are encouraged to take courses they are excited about. To get started, please review the list of approved electives on the specialization webpage. You can make your own combination of courses from the full list of approved electives, or you can follow one of the specialization examples at the bottom of the specialization webpage.

2. Review Accreditation Units and Accreditation Requirements are Met

After you have reviewed courses you are interested in, you can combine those courses to ensure you are meeting accreditation requirements.

According to these guidelines, our program must meet a minimum of Engineering Science and Engineering Design content, quantified for each course as a single number called the Accreditation Unit (AU).

For your Technical Electives, you must choose at least 21 credits from the course list below:

Total no fewer than 180 AU's.
A maximum of 7-8 credits (2 courses) of 100 or 200 level courses.
A minimum of 9 credits of 400 level courses.

Important Notes:

For students considering Graduate school, additional 400 level courses may be necessary.
Not all courses will be available each year and the BMEG program cannot guarantee seats as many electives are non-BMEG courses.
The AUs are designed to capture engineering content, which varies with the topic, and is not a representation of the relevance or usefulness of the course material to your education and career.

3. Use the Specialization Navigator (SN)

What SN is meant to do:

Let you know whether you have met all the guidelines outlined for the Specialization requirements for accreditation
Identify pre-requisites for your technical electives that are outside the core curriculum so students are able to plan accordingly
Identify any course equivalencies (students are only permitted to take one of those courses)

What SN cannot do:

Does not tell you when the course is offered (Term 1, 2 or summer) and by extension cannot account for any course conflicts
Does not guarantee students seats into that course
Does not register students into the courses
Confirm whether you have met ALL degree requirements (only Students Services and Engineering Academic Services can determine that)

Cannot be used for core course planning

Important Tips on how to use:

Please download the SN every time you intend to use it, in case we have made updates to the file. If you notice any discrepancies, please let Student Services know immediately so we can make adjust it accordingly. Our website will include when it was last updated.

When students open the SN, please click “Enable Macro” or “Enable Content” to access the file.

We recommend having our curriculum page and the SN (linked below) open. Starting with the 400-level courses, plug those into the SN and SN will tell you if there are any pre-requisites for those courses. Add those pre-requisite courses in and slowly build it out.

Download the 2025W tool here:

Last Updated 15 May 2024