Healthcare challenges are one of the biggest problems facing today's society. We have a lot of diseases that are unsolved, we have a lot of people that need better care. Here at McMaster University, we're transforming these healthcare challenges into a new learning experience, bringing health sciences and engineering together into a hands-on, project-based, five-year program.

Introducing the new Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences Program. Biomedical problems are very complex. There's the human element, there's the technological element. And in order to solve these type of complex problems, you need experts from many different areas of study and many different backgrounds.

And this program is going to produce such graduates. Students will start in a special first year that's different from our common first year in engineering. They'll have a mix already of health sciences and introduction to biomedical engineering and introduction to health sciences, as well as the standard engineering and science courses.

And the program is designed as students have a tremendous number of choices. After first year, students may pursue either an engineering degree or a health sciences degree, as they collaborate between departments to solve real-world problems. For the remainder of the program, students take some common classes and complete health-related design projects.

I wanted to come to health sciences because it presented me with the opportunity to really explore different facets of the human condition, the world itself, by giving me the time and the opportunity to work with different disciplines, to work through a project-based learning structure. McMaster has a world-class reputation in both health sciences and engineering, consistently ranked internationally among the top 40 universities in the world for medicine and health sciences, and rated one of the top 10 engineering schools in Canada. My favourite experience from here is the fact that I got to take a full year of anatomy, and we actually got to use the medical equipment at St. Joe's Hospital.

And it was an absolutely wonderful resource because it meant that we could look, we could touch, we could feel all the connected and complex structures that are within the human body. And it just made a much more in-depth and a much more exciting learning experience. We expect that applicants to this program are not content with the status quo, but want to be at the leading edge, at the cutting edge.

They want to be innovators and entrepreneurs. Biomedical engineers have a really great opportunity to impact the lives of thousands of patients. The technologies that they pioneer and that they help to be implemented in hospitals have the possibility to impact a huge number of people in the population, which is a great thing to be a part of. McMaster University's new integrated biomedical engineering and health sciences program, transforming today's students into tomorrow's trailblazers.