BE100 is a rite of passage for bioengineering majors at this school, and that makes sense. The first 2? weeks of this class is like a mildly uncomfortable trainride. "Hmm, this is very bumpy, I'm a little nauseous." Problem set 1 is a fat amalgam of trivia. Can't remember much about pset 2.

If I recall, problem set 3 is when all hell breaks loose. The class is like a carcrash from there. Lots of blurry vision and text. So much text.

Kamei covers a lot of stuff in lecture. Don't be like me and take notes on the printed slides on a blank piece of paper. That's dumb. Print the slides out, and then fill in the blank spots with Prof. Kamei's examples. (Or better yet, if you have the money, buy a tablet, edit the slide pdf's on there..)

Don't do the problem sets the night before. If I could tell my naive, dumb*ss sophomore self something, it would be "READ AND THINK ABOUT THE PROBLEM SETS WHEN THEY ARE RELEASED" That isn't necessarily doing them, but get your subconscious pondering the problems before you dig into them. Start writing your solutions to these psets 3 days before they're due (or even earlier).

The problem sets are the best way to learn, so don't just go through the master folder and copy down the solutions. Think about the insight of the problem, what it means in the context of the class and lectures, and wtf the answer means. Do every single problem. Attempt them all.

Best of luck. I remember, after midterm 1, a mysterious amount of people had disappeared from lecture and I found out they became CS majors.

man writes his own positive reviews. just notice how all the dates are close together in march at times. he's been caught trying to bolster his own image. he even sends his own lab minions to defend him in public settings. it's wild. he can't handle any criticism. if this review gets downvoted, you know exactly the reason why now.
you gotta take him to survive in BE at UCLA. My advice to you is: prepare yourself mentally for the assf*cking of your life. but be tough, and don't let him be the reason you leave BE. take as few classes simultaneously as possible to get through 100 and 110, spend several hours a week on the problem sets (but not too many as to hurt your sanity), survive both classes, and then say goodbye to him forever. you'll get through this. i'm not gonna lie: it will suck. but you will get through this. the other upperdivs in BE can be very fun and engaging and incredible. it's just a shame he's gotta be the gatekeeper.

I took this class for the Engineering Science tech breadth having only satisfied the minimum prerequisites: Math 33B and Physics 1B, as a sophomore. Despite my minimal background in Bioengineering, I found the class to be very manageable and highly interesting, and I ended up getting an A. This class was easier and less time-consuming than many lower divs (but definitely not easy). If you’re a ChemE, think of it as a Ch Engr 101A/109 Combo course with some electrochemistry on the side.
Dr. Kamei has a distinguished teaching award, and it shows; he's a phenomenal lecturer. He definitely cares about whether his students learn, and he explains very well. He teaches math better than most math professors do :)
About the logistics about the class: You must show up to lecture, and you must print out the slides or bring a tablet. You should also read the lecture slides beforehand, to not be lost during class. The slides are NOT a way to skip lecture. Dr. Kamei talks about stuff that are not on the slides, and he sets up the vast majority of his proofs by writing on the whiteboard. Besides missing out on critical information and examples, Kamei's lecturing skills would be wasted if you don't go to lecture. So go to lecture.
Next, as a heads-up, this is a math-heavy class, which can be split into three parts. The first part is electrostatic modeling of nanoparticles. The second part is numerical methods of solving differential equations, and the third part is fluid dynamics. While the class (and the syllabus) can seem intimidating at first, don't be scared. It's a ton of math, but Kamei is very good at teaching, and both him and the TAs are very helpful during office hours. You will be fine if you don't have a background in Bioengineering. Besides the prerequisites, all you really need are basic coding skills and a basic knowledge of biology.
The exams were definitely difficult; you need to be able to do homework-level questions quickly alongside knowing concepts. That said, the homework was definitely on the level of the exams, and you get a plethora of old exam questions to practice with. Even better, the homework only took a few hours per week. There was also a numerical methods project in the middle of the quarter which was decently time-consuming, but definitely a grade booster provided you followed the directions. Again, Kamei is willing to help out in case of difficulties in terms of the projects.
Tl;dr: Don't be scared to take this class if you hear about Kamei's reputation as a hard professor and/or if you lack a background in Bioengineering. Also, even though this class appears to be offered only once every few years, it's worth taking. He's that good at teaching.

Dr. Kamei is my favorite professor in the BE department. He always makes himself available to help students. Yes, this class is hard. However, I felt that it was much less theoretical when compared to 100. Do all of the practice problems in every PSet. Do all of the extra problems that he gives you. Put in the time and effort (If you are able to do so) and you will do well in the class.

Dr. Kamei truly cares about making the degree we get a worthwhile one. I will always trust him to write a fair test and act in the best interest of the BE department.

In terms of the shift to online learning, I felt that Dr. Kamei handled it fairly well. Lectures are mandatory, PSets were still due regularly, and both midterms and the final were still held. In response to the protests occurring during finals week, Dr. Kamei did agree to make the final "no harm" after being asked to do so by students. Dr. Kamei is receptive to students and overall a pretty genuine dude.

This class is definintely challenging but people only mention the difficulty in the review, so here are some notes & tips to give you a better idea of the class:

-he posts his slides so if you have an iPad it's super easy to annotate them
-this year he changed the class so there is less of a thermodynamics focus and more of a computer and MATLAB coding focus (Numerical Methods to find pI, Jacobi vs. Gaussian Iteration Methods, Protein Data Bank stuff, etc) which makes the tests less derivation heavy & gives you more freebies on exams.
-Kamei posts a practice midterm ("Additional Problems before the Exam"). There are like 40 questions and if you do all of them & understand the solutions, you'll be able to do well enough on the test. Some of the exam questions are almost exactly the same as these questions.
-Kamei will be explicit with what you need to know vs. what you don't need to know, so take note of the things he makes note of and ignore the stuff he says to ignore. In this way, he gives you hints of what to expect on the test.
-Dr. Kamei will post videos called "Office Hours Problems to help with Problem Set ___" where he goes step by step through challenging problems similar to the ones on your problem set so that you have a guide to solve your problem set problems. The discussion problems are also great resources to help guide you through your PS as these are also very similar to your Problem Sets.

Kamei gives you a lot of resources to succeed in his class and has been changing the format of the class to help his students. So if you take advantage of the resources he is giving you, it becomes a lot easier to succeed.

I enjoyed 110 more than 100. It was much less theoretical.

I will say that the S2020 distribution reported to Bruinwalk seems a little skewed, because many people opted to P/NP (thus people who took LG were very confident in their ability to get an A, typical BioE pre meds).

Same advice for BE100 applies. Prof. Kamei is very clear in office hours.

I've never seen a prof with a bigger stick up his ass. When I asked for an extension on one assignment (during first spring covid quarter no less), he told me that bioengineering "wasn't for me" and I shouldn't drop out. He's been the single biggest obstacle to me getting a degree at this school.

...don't trust his bruinwalk reviews--he makes his lab minions write positive ones and attempts to get the bad ones taken down.

Dr. Kamei is out of touch with the body of students he is meant to educate, and with his presence in class brings along many insecurities which find way into making this class absolutely treacherous for any student group with particular emphasis on student minority groups.His teaching aside, as awful as it may be, it makes of no sense to me how classes can continually grow worse under his teaching. He has mentioned that classes have done worse in recent years, to put such disappointments on the weight of the students shoulder's, as he infamously does, shows nothing but his lack to connect with and understand students, and that he is out of touch. And, seeing how he has been teaching here in the last 20+ years leads me to believe that he is particularly out of touch with minority students, which leads me to believe that he needs to take on some serious minority students training, or reconsider another role not at the expense of the student-facing population.

In all honesty, He is an enthusiastic lecturer but not necessarily a good one. He mostly just reads off his slides and takes turns using the board as well ( which isn't recorded since he only does audio recordings and doesn't provide written notes on slides either just kinda leaves it blank). You get the best version of him during lectures and meeting him one-on-one you see the worst sides. It's like the more the people around the nicer he is. As long as u worship his class and aren't an inconvenience to him (don't be absent, request for extensions, etc) you will be golden. This is a time-consuming course and can't be taken with other hard classes and he designs the course with a similar expectation. He gave us the answers to problem sets which helped decrease the workload but if you don't struggle through the problem sets you will not score well on the tests (the average for midterms was around 60 and 40's and the final was 50's). He also had a total of 5 projects in discussion that were scattered around, these only counted for 3% of your total grade and anything relevant from it for the test he would mention in class. This is one of those classes you just have to struggle and get through. He is quite similar to Barr but Worse in his demeanor and the course is a lot harder. Again it's more about how much you can commit to it, it's not fair but as long as you stay on top of it and go beyond what he asks of you will be fine. {When I say above and beyond I mean - go over his posted slides before the lecture, be completely attentive during his 2-hour lecture and annotate on a copy of his slides (TAKE notes), ask questions during the lecture even if you think they are really dumb, go to his office hours right after the lecture and listen to other students talk to him or talk to him urself (this could be a chance to go over lecture content/HW and letting pattern recognition do its thing later during tests), go over content after the lecture, divide the HW to do some each day on your own and then check ur answers with his, start studying for exams a minimum of 10 days ahead, do all HW's again until you can understand and solve it completely, do the past tests, go to him and ask for more past papers or variations of questions you can practice (ask a week before so u can keep asking him and maybe get insight into what he might end up putting in the exam), bonus tip- find ways to feed and boost his ego)
GOOD LUCK, YOU GOT THIS AND THIS CLASS DOESN'T DEFINE YOU (at least not how smart you are but how much time and effort ur willing to commit to a class that won't make a difference to your career but still has interesting content to learn about, his tests just make u dread learning it by putting an unnecessary amount of difficulty.)

Horrible person, good lecturer. Sucks at grading and blames his students for low test scores even though each year the averages drop. OH is not helpful, full of kids asses trying to one up each other. He’s not funny. So much material and little time to understand it.