transformatrix

DUDE COOL! I'm a junior undergrad studying bioengineering at UCSD and researching retinal prosthetics. Not exactly a bionic eye, since they mainly treat degenerative retinal disorders and kind of work as a connection between neurons that are already there, but kind of close! I'm sure a lot of the technology would overlap, and it's the absolute coolest biomedical technology that's out there, in my opinion, and a lot of research is going into it. Electrical nerve stimulation is where it's at.

Yep, exactly! A great place to start, since it's part of the CNS and transmits pretty much directly to the brain! I was (still am, sort of) more interested in motor prosthetics, but retinal and auditory prosthetics are just so much higher in demand and have a lot more progress.

They are the same! UCSD offers bioengineering which is the most mechanical/electrical engineering based, biotechnology which is the most chemistry based, bioinformatics which might be computer science-y, and biosystems, and I have no idea what biosystems people do. UCSD is great, so are Irvine and Davis! All the UCs are very, very good.