Purpose <p>Biomedical engineering (BME) curricula are necessarily broad and it has been reported that BME students can experience substantial barriers to their career attainment compared to other engineering majors.</p> Methods <p>Challenges and curricular innovations for addressing industry needs were discussed in workshops held at the BME Education Summit. This event was attended by educators and BME industry representatives.</p> Results <p>Skills needed by employers included verbal and written communication, mechanical design, engineering competency, teamwork, initiative, and self-motivation. Areas reported to be not well addressed in the BME curriculum included manufacturing, design controls, drafting, regulatory affairs, and quality systems.</p> <p>Specialized master’s programs are one approach to meeting industry needs. Micro-credentialing and certificate programs are another proposed innovation for appropriately training biomedical engineers for careers in industry. Another approach is via formal entrepreneurship and commercialization training. This may include having specific course offerings, assignments, and case studies focused on entrepreneurship and commercialization; having guest speakers and representatives from industry integrated in the classroom; and teaching and mentoring from faculty with expertise in these areas.</p> Conclusions <p>Specific next steps to align academic program offerings with industry needs include directly developing specialized programs with industry partners, assessing specialty programs by both academic and industrial entities, aligning specialty program outcomes with ABET student outcomes or encouraging graduate accreditation bodies to develop a framework that directly assesses specialty programs. There is a need among the BME community to establish a broad standard for collecting informative data regarding BME-graduate industry readiness from courses, programs, employers, and recent alumni.</p>