BIOENGR 176
Principles of Biocompatibility
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Enforced requisites: course 100, Mathematics 33B, Physics 1C. Biocompatibility at systemic, tissue, cellular, and molecular levels. Biomechanical compatibility, stress/strain constitutive equations, cellular and molecular response to mechanical signals, biochemical and cellular compatibility, immune response. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2017 - NOTE: I actually took BE 188 (Cell Engineering) with Dr. Li, not 176. Well, the main positive thing from the class is that you learn a lot about topics in cell biology and immunology (e.g., immunomodulation/immunoisolation, stem cells) that you do not really get in the other electives in the BE program at UCLA. However, I felt that the negatives definitely outweighed the positives for the following reasons: 1. The professor is not good at posting things on time. Lectures and other materials were posted 1-2 days (or more) after he said he would post them, which is inconvenient for students who may want to take notes on the printed slides or who want to access lab protocols and homework on a timely basis. 2. The class had a big load of work. Midterms and Final combines were about 45% of your grade (I think it was midterm 20% and final 25). A group project (a 1 page proposal+8 to 10 min presentation + final paper of 10 pages max) was worth 15%, homework (you got full credit for completing it and turning it in on time, which is a positive) was worth 20%, and labs were worth 20%. If you don't think that's bad, then you are mistaken, which brings me to the next point... 3. The labs were not well structured at the beginning. The first lab was like a battlefield. People were rushing to and fro trying to complete everything AND Dr. Li was there, unable to control it. He is the HEAD of the department, and I don't think it fared well on him. Also, he initially wanted to have groups of 2, but anyone with two working eyes could have seen that there weren't enough hoods for that to happen (again, he is the department head, and this doesn't make him look good). But that's not all! He told us to complete the "Chemical, Biological, and General" lab safety courses for lab. News flash: Those titles don't exist at UCLA! And yet again, this makes the head of the BE department seem like he is not as up to date about lab preparation guidelines as he should be. After the first two labs, the TA thankfully stepped in more and wrote fairer labs. However, the last lab should have been shorter or modified more since it was hard to get all of the microscopy images for the following reason... 4. Lack of space and equipment. When we went into the lab in Boelter, the people from the other 188 were there, so it was inconvenient to say the least. During the actual lab, there was not enough ethanol to go around to spray and disinfect everything as needed. The incubator got contaminated, so we had to repeat an experiment. There were only 2 working microscopes and they were in separate rooms! We were about 18-20 students who had lab 2-4 PM on Fridays and 6-7 PM-ish on Mondays/Wednesdays (the latter M/W times are to basically change cell culture media, and attendance is based on what you set up with your group members) WHILE BE 167L has a max of 12 students per session with a total of 6 HOURS of dedicated lab time. The BE Dept SERIOUSLY needs another lab! 5. Midterm grading. It took the professor almost a month after the midterm to FINALLY give the key to the TA to grade. It should not have taken him that long. Seriously. 6. Student input. He gave anonymous surveys, but he delayed this (as is his custom), so I think he gave them too late. HOWEVER, I will give him the good point that the Final was actually not so bad. It was relatively fair and I felt more comfortable with it than the midterm. PROTIP: For the Restricted Core Elective, it does NOT have to be a 188 or any BE class in the list they give you. It can be ANY Upper division BIOENGINEERING course as long as you fill out the petition corretly. For the Regular Electives, you can take any upper division course that is SOMEHOW related to bioengineering (e.g., chemistry/biochemistry, biostatistics, life sciences, mcdb, mimg, psychology) that is not counted for any other requirement. I recommend to stay away from this class if you can. You do learn some interesting things, but the delays and disorganization were NOT worth it.
Spring 2017 - NOTE: I actually took BE 188 (Cell Engineering) with Dr. Li, not 176. Well, the main positive thing from the class is that you learn a lot about topics in cell biology and immunology (e.g., immunomodulation/immunoisolation, stem cells) that you do not really get in the other electives in the BE program at UCLA. However, I felt that the negatives definitely outweighed the positives for the following reasons: 1. The professor is not good at posting things on time. Lectures and other materials were posted 1-2 days (or more) after he said he would post them, which is inconvenient for students who may want to take notes on the printed slides or who want to access lab protocols and homework on a timely basis. 2. The class had a big load of work. Midterms and Final combines were about 45% of your grade (I think it was midterm 20% and final 25). A group project (a 1 page proposal+8 to 10 min presentation + final paper of 10 pages max) was worth 15%, homework (you got full credit for completing it and turning it in on time, which is a positive) was worth 20%, and labs were worth 20%. If you don't think that's bad, then you are mistaken, which brings me to the next point... 3. The labs were not well structured at the beginning. The first lab was like a battlefield. People were rushing to and fro trying to complete everything AND Dr. Li was there, unable to control it. He is the HEAD of the department, and I don't think it fared well on him. Also, he initially wanted to have groups of 2, but anyone with two working eyes could have seen that there weren't enough hoods for that to happen (again, he is the department head, and this doesn't make him look good). But that's not all! He told us to complete the "Chemical, Biological, and General" lab safety courses for lab. News flash: Those titles don't exist at UCLA! And yet again, this makes the head of the BE department seem like he is not as up to date about lab preparation guidelines as he should be. After the first two labs, the TA thankfully stepped in more and wrote fairer labs. However, the last lab should have been shorter or modified more since it was hard to get all of the microscopy images for the following reason... 4. Lack of space and equipment. When we went into the lab in Boelter, the people from the other 188 were there, so it was inconvenient to say the least. During the actual lab, there was not enough ethanol to go around to spray and disinfect everything as needed. The incubator got contaminated, so we had to repeat an experiment. There were only 2 working microscopes and they were in separate rooms! We were about 18-20 students who had lab 2-4 PM on Fridays and 6-7 PM-ish on Mondays/Wednesdays (the latter M/W times are to basically change cell culture media, and attendance is based on what you set up with your group members) WHILE BE 167L has a max of 12 students per session with a total of 6 HOURS of dedicated lab time. The BE Dept SERIOUSLY needs another lab! 5. Midterm grading. It took the professor almost a month after the midterm to FINALLY give the key to the TA to grade. It should not have taken him that long. Seriously. 6. Student input. He gave anonymous surveys, but he delayed this (as is his custom), so I think he gave them too late. HOWEVER, I will give him the good point that the Final was actually not so bad. It was relatively fair and I felt more comfortable with it than the midterm. PROTIP: For the Restricted Core Elective, it does NOT have to be a 188 or any BE class in the list they give you. It can be ANY Upper division BIOENGINEERING course as long as you fill out the petition corretly. For the Regular Electives, you can take any upper division course that is SOMEHOW related to bioengineering (e.g., chemistry/biochemistry, biostatistics, life sciences, mcdb, mimg, psychology) that is not counted for any other requirement. I recommend to stay away from this class if you can. You do learn some interesting things, but the delays and disorganization were NOT worth it.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - This class is very different than other engineering classes and it is heavily designed for all the pre-meds. However, the class still has lots of very very interesting information and I learned a lot about biocompatibility and the immune system. However, Professor Linsley isn't the best at telling you what you really need to know for the exams. The lectures COVER a lot of information and although he says "not to memorize" you do have to know the content very well to do good on the exams (aka memorize). The exams test deeper understanding and not just memorization but you do need to have all the terms memorized so you can give deeper explanations. This year was his second time teaching and so the exams were mostly free response and some multiple-choice questions. The main problem for this class was that since there was so much information on the slides and he never told us what are the important things we needed to know it meant that it was very easy to lose a few points here and there which resulted in lots of % drop (since the exams were only out of about 50 points, so each one point mistake was worth 2%). However, he and the TAs were nice enough to offer a small extra credit opportunity and they also graded the final exam very leniently. We also did lose a few days of class time because of all the annoying protests so he had to cut out some stuff. The main problem for this class is the fact that he doesn't use his own slides, and rather uses the ones from the previous professor. Overall this class is very different from other engineering classes as it isn't very computational and rather much more understanding of biology and how that incorporates into the design of biomedical devices and implants. He is a good guy but just not a very good teacher but I am hoping he will be better next year since he will have more experience.
Spring 2024 - This class is very different than other engineering classes and it is heavily designed for all the pre-meds. However, the class still has lots of very very interesting information and I learned a lot about biocompatibility and the immune system. However, Professor Linsley isn't the best at telling you what you really need to know for the exams. The lectures COVER a lot of information and although he says "not to memorize" you do have to know the content very well to do good on the exams (aka memorize). The exams test deeper understanding and not just memorization but you do need to have all the terms memorized so you can give deeper explanations. This year was his second time teaching and so the exams were mostly free response and some multiple-choice questions. The main problem for this class was that since there was so much information on the slides and he never told us what are the important things we needed to know it meant that it was very easy to lose a few points here and there which resulted in lots of % drop (since the exams were only out of about 50 points, so each one point mistake was worth 2%). However, he and the TAs were nice enough to offer a small extra credit opportunity and they also graded the final exam very leniently. We also did lose a few days of class time because of all the annoying protests so he had to cut out some stuff. The main problem for this class is the fact that he doesn't use his own slides, and rather uses the ones from the previous professor. Overall this class is very different from other engineering classes as it isn't very computational and rather much more understanding of biology and how that incorporates into the design of biomedical devices and implants. He is a good guy but just not a very good teacher but I am hoping he will be better next year since he will have more experience.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - The reviews from 2015 are more or less accurate, but the class structure seems to have changed a bit. The grading scheme is as follows: Quiz 1: 30% (Week 4) (Avg = 58.3%) Quiz 2: 30% (Week 7) (Avg = 70%) Quiz 3: 40% (Week 10) (Avg = 66.2%) "Over 30% of the class earned A's, 58% received B's, 13% received C's" - Wu I got ~73% on all three quizzes and got an A-. The quizzes are non-cumulative and are basically just a memorization game. There were around 30-35 questions and we were given 60 minutes for quizzes 1 and 2 and 90 minutes for quiz 3. This year the format was all multiple choice, except for a single calculus problem on Quiz 1. The quizzes were taken in class, but on your laptop using a Lockdown browser. Wu has a system where if you manage to get one of the top 5 scores on any one of the quizzes, then you automatically get an A. He also had an alternate grading scheme that allowed you to drop either Quiz 1 or 2, but be graded against everyone else's top 2 quizzes. There were also recorded covid-versions of each lecture that were posted. There were also practice quizzes that were on bruinlearn (not sure if they were created by TA’s or by Wu). Personal opinion territory: I didn’t think this class was nearly as awful as the 2015 reviews make it out to be. It wasn't the most riveting class, but BE 100 and 110 were wayyyyyyy harder. There’s not that much conceptual thinking required in this class since the material is all just ‘facts’ being thrown at you. The main thing seems to be that there is just a lot of material and details and you have to memorize it all. I started making anki flashcards after Quiz 2, but in hindsight I should have started making them from the very start. Wu was a decent lecturer, but I stopped attending lectures after week 4 and just watched his posted lectures since I could take better notes that way. The main topics were FDA regulations, materials science of implants, how implants and other stuff trigger immune system + immune response, and slight electrochemistry of implants.
Spring 2022 - The reviews from 2015 are more or less accurate, but the class structure seems to have changed a bit. The grading scheme is as follows: Quiz 1: 30% (Week 4) (Avg = 58.3%) Quiz 2: 30% (Week 7) (Avg = 70%) Quiz 3: 40% (Week 10) (Avg = 66.2%) "Over 30% of the class earned A's, 58% received B's, 13% received C's" - Wu I got ~73% on all three quizzes and got an A-. The quizzes are non-cumulative and are basically just a memorization game. There were around 30-35 questions and we were given 60 minutes for quizzes 1 and 2 and 90 minutes for quiz 3. This year the format was all multiple choice, except for a single calculus problem on Quiz 1. The quizzes were taken in class, but on your laptop using a Lockdown browser. Wu has a system where if you manage to get one of the top 5 scores on any one of the quizzes, then you automatically get an A. He also had an alternate grading scheme that allowed you to drop either Quiz 1 or 2, but be graded against everyone else's top 2 quizzes. There were also recorded covid-versions of each lecture that were posted. There were also practice quizzes that were on bruinlearn (not sure if they were created by TA’s or by Wu). Personal opinion territory: I didn’t think this class was nearly as awful as the 2015 reviews make it out to be. It wasn't the most riveting class, but BE 100 and 110 were wayyyyyyy harder. There’s not that much conceptual thinking required in this class since the material is all just ‘facts’ being thrown at you. The main thing seems to be that there is just a lot of material and details and you have to memorize it all. I started making anki flashcards after Quiz 2, but in hindsight I should have started making them from the very start. Wu was a decent lecturer, but I stopped attending lectures after week 4 and just watched his posted lectures since I could take better notes that way. The main topics were FDA regulations, materials science of implants, how implants and other stuff trigger immune system + immune response, and slight electrochemistry of implants.
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