Using post-graduate research to introduce biomedical engineering to pre-university students.

Biomedical engineering is a growing and useful industry, and as such it is important to educate people about it. Due to the nature of the topic it can be difficult to put across field-related concepts to those not in the field. This paper seeks to perform a preliminary investigation into presenting an example of biomedical engineering to pre-university students. By simplifying the physical aspect of a biomedical engineering project and adjusting the focus to re-introduce basic concepts relating to science and engineering (which may usually be ignored), short presentations were able to be given to primary and high school students in a simple and interactive way. Preliminary results showed a link between the interest of the teacher and the interest of the students (in engineering and science), as well as demonstrating a link between age and attention span to the biomedical aspects. Locale and socioeconomic status also appeared to be correlated to interest in engineering. Further research would need to be performed to determine how the initial interest corresponds to interest in biomedical engineering during later education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]