ARLINGTON, Va., March 28, 2003 – The number of Goldwater Scholars this year who are pursuing or planning to pursue careers in bioengineering or biomedical engineering has nearly doubled from previous years.

Twenty one of this year’s 300 awardees list either bioengineering, biomedical engineering or a related field as their current or future career path, compared to about 12 in 2002 and about 11 in 2001.

“Obviously, this is further evidence of the ability of this new discipline to attract the very best,” says Clinton T. Rubin, Ph.D., professor and chair of the State University of New York at Stony Brook Department of Biomedical Engineering, which has one of this year’s scholars.

Other evidence of the flourishing field includes a steady and significant increase in enrollment in bioengineering and biomedical engineering at both the graduate and undergraduate levels while enrollment for engineering overall has remained steady or risen only slightly. In the United States and Canada, the number of academic departments and programs offering degrees in biomedical engineering or bioengineering has more than doubled since 1980.

Established in 1986, the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation has awarded a total of 3,962 scholarships to undergraduate sophomores and juniors from the United States on the basis of their academic merit. The foundation awarded 302 scholarships in 2002 and 316 in 2001. Of the 300 scholars for 2003, 45 are majoring in engineering. Students are nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide.

“We didn’t specifically go after people in these fields, they just rose to the top,” says Gerald J. Smith, president of the Goldwater Foundation. The one- and two-year scholarships will cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.

The scholarship program honors Senator Barry M. Goldwater and was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering.

The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields. Recent Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 50 Rhodes Scholarships (6 of the thirty-two awarded in the United States in 2003), 55 Marshall Awards (8 of the 40 awarded in the United States in 2003), and numerous other distinguished fellowships.