The opportunity to pursue higher education at one of the country’s 100 or so historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) comes with a caveat for those students wishing to pursue a degree in biomedical engineering. While HBCUs confer as many as 25% of the country’s Black graduates with STEM degrees, only about a third of the schools offer an engineering program, with fewer still offering a biomedical engineering degree program.
To begin to help HBCUs build and sustain biomedical engineering programs, NIBIB has designed an initiative called Enhancing Biomedical Engineering, Imaging, and Technology Acceleration (eBEITA) at HBCUs. This dual-phase capacity-building award allows institutions time to plan and initiate activities before launching into the program’s full implementation. The eBEITA format encourages HBCUs to develop a unique vision for expanding research capacity, funding streams, and impact in this fast-growing area of innovation and technology development. Recently, NIBIB made its first round of eBEITA grants to two HBCUs.