Graduate Funding
Support Throughout Your Degree Program
Teaching and Research Assistantships
All full-time BME doctoral students in good academic standing are supported financially during their graduate studies. This includes annual stipend, in-state tuition, out-of-state tuition (if applicable), and health insurance. First-year support is typically provided by the department or the college in the form of fellowship or research assistantship.
Beyond the first year, support is typically provided by the faculty adviser, using funds from the adviser's research grant or the departmentwide training grants (see following section), contingent upon the student's satisfactory academic progress and good standing in the BME program. Students can also be supported through teaching assistantships.
Teaching and research assistantships for master's students are handled on a case-by-case basis. Master's students may also be supported by a variety of fellowships and scholarships.
Detailed information about teaching and research assistantships is available in the UA Graduate College GA Manual.
Scholarships and Fellowships
The BME graduate program encourages all students to seek fellowship funding. The following resources simplify finding, applying for and managing fellowships and scholarships:
- Graduate College search for funding
- UA graduate diversity programs
- Scholarship Universe, UA scholarship database and search tool
- UA Office of Fellowships support for finding external funding
- UA Engineering’s deadline-driven list
Among fellowship sources for BME students are the following:
- American Heart Association
- ARCS Foundation (through department)
- BIO5 Institute
- National Institutes of Health Training Grants
- UA Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Biomedical Systems
- Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research
- Flinn Foundation
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- NSF Graduate Research Program
- Whitaker Foundations
NIH T32 Grants
The National Institutes of Health fund Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Institutional Training Grants, or T32 grants, to train graduate researchers in specified shortage areas.
BME faculty serve as principal investigators on two of the UA’s NIH T32 grants.
Cardiovascular Biomedical Engineering Training Grant
Led by Jennifer Barton, the Cardiovascular Biomedical Engineering training program is dedicated to training predoctoral students in biological and engineering disciplines focusing on cardiovascular health to meet the demands of a growing biomedical engineering field.
Graduate Training in Biomedical Imaging and Spectroscopy
Art Gmitro leads the Biomedical Imaging and Spectroscopy training program, which draws on the the UA's exceptional strengths in biomedical engineering and optical sciences. Training is based on fundamental instructions in the mathematical and engineering principles of image science combined with exposure to a broad range of biomedical applications.