By creating a Department of Biomedical Engineering—one that builds on the strengths of physical sciences and engineering, Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medical College—the Engineering College is focusing its efforts on systems biology and applications to human health. The vision for biomedical engineering is to develop a quantitative understanding of the human body across length and time scales. The ability to link quantitatively genomic and molecular level insights to whole organism physiology systems is key to engineering designs for improved therapeutic strategies for drug delivery, diagnosis of disease, and design of effective medical devices. Several unique capabilities support this effort, including Cornell’s strengths in micro- and nanofabricated systems and cellular and molecular imaging.