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 2025 - He's a nice person but not the best professor. He is very vague at telling you what you need to know and often tells you to post a question on Piazza when you ask him something in person (he won't even answer the Piazza question until much later). A lot of students felt that there was a lot of ambiguity and unclarity near the end of the class due to mistakes in lectures and slides that he didn't clear up until last minute. In my opinion, this is one of those classes where you never feel prepared for exams regardless of how much you study. He gives very few practice problems, making it hard to raise your grade once you do bad on one exam. Additionally, exams are graded relatively harshly-- you need to have specific phrases in your answers to even get credit on some of them. This class will also make you question what the point of lecture is. Linsley uses the "flipped classroom" style where instead of lecturing in class, he relies on student questions and like four clicker questions over the span of two hours. To actually understand what goes on in "lecture," you have to watch around three hours of videos beforehand, which he tends to post very last minute (4-6 hours before midnight on Sunday and they are very information overload). He will also sometimes cancel or delay class last minute, which is very annoying considering that this class is typically an 8 AM. Overall, it's a shame that such an interesting class is taught so poorly. The way this class is run with the asynchronous videos, mediocre lectures, vague responses, and lack of practice questions to reinforce concepts makes it extremely unenjoyable and probably one of the worst classes I've taken at this school. He always tells us he appreciates our effort and reassures us that everything is fine (which is nice) but it's disappointing to see the lack of effort on his side to help us succeed as students.
Spring 2025 - He's a nice person but not the best professor. He is very vague at telling you what you need to know and often tells you to post a question on Piazza when you ask him something in person (he won't even answer the Piazza question until much later). A lot of students felt that there was a lot of ambiguity and unclarity near the end of the class due to mistakes in lectures and slides that he didn't clear up until last minute. In my opinion, this is one of those classes where you never feel prepared for exams regardless of how much you study. He gives very few practice problems, making it hard to raise your grade once you do bad on one exam. Additionally, exams are graded relatively harshly-- you need to have specific phrases in your answers to even get credit on some of them. This class will also make you question what the point of lecture is. Linsley uses the "flipped classroom" style where instead of lecturing in class, he relies on student questions and like four clicker questions over the span of two hours. To actually understand what goes on in "lecture," you have to watch around three hours of videos beforehand, which he tends to post very last minute (4-6 hours before midnight on Sunday and they are very information overload). He will also sometimes cancel or delay class last minute, which is very annoying considering that this class is typically an 8 AM. Overall, it's a shame that such an interesting class is taught so poorly. The way this class is run with the asynchronous videos, mediocre lectures, vague responses, and lack of practice questions to reinforce concepts makes it extremely unenjoyable and probably one of the worst classes I've taken at this school. He always tells us he appreciates our effort and reassures us that everything is fine (which is nice) but it's disappointing to see the lack of effort on his side to help us succeed as students.
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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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