Will research experience in chemical engineering count when applying to grad school for biomedical engineering? I am a sophomore international student currently majoring in chemical engineering and hoping to get into graduate school for biomedical engineering sometime in the future. My university is very small and is more focused on defense rather than biomedical engineering research so the chemical engineering department is the only engineering department on campus that conducts biomedical engineering research. 

Because of this and a lack of understanding of the major, I decided to major in chemical engineering. However, as I get deeper and deeper into my major, I realize I'm not very happy with it. I don't enjoy the process engineering industrial aspect of my major and realized that I want to get involved in imaging research. But none of the faculty in the engineering college at my university do this kind of research. I’m also being told that I needed to have done something like electrical engineering or mechanical engineering to get involved in imaging. 

I’m afraid that if I switch majors now, the research with biomaterials that I am currently doing with a faculty member in the chemical engineering department won’t be counted as research experience for graduate school. I am also afraid of burning bridges with this faculty member in question by just switching to another engineering major. Long story short, I still want to get into a biomedical engineering PhD program, but I’m just concerned that the field that I’m currently in won’t get me into the specific field of biomedical engineering that I’m interested in in the future. 

Will the research I’m doing now count as relevant experience for graduate school and positively add to my graduate school admissions?
Your research experience counts!

Specifically, you are getting experience in the process of "doing research": finding a question, reading the literature, forming hypotheses and figuring out how to test them, etc. These are important skills, even moreso than (say) knowing your way around a specific instrument's console. Admission committees also know that your local options, especially as an undergrad, are limited. I did linguistics and computer science research as an undergrad, and then applied (successfully) to neuroscience programs. 

If you can do well with your current work, I think you'll be good shape for grad school. You probably do want to address this change in your personal statement by briefly mentioning how/why your motivations changed and the skills you will bring to your new program. I talked a little about I saw machine learning techniques crash and burn on language/vision tasks, and wanted to understand how people/animals did so well with such lousy "hardware". I also mentioned that my existing training would let me analyze and model large datasets, like the ones I hoped to collect.

Finally, don't forget that some of your skills are "reusable" in biomedical engineering. The development of tracers for PET/SPECT involves a lot of chemistry, ditto for flourophores for microscopy. Process experience can help when building or using high-throughput screening systems. There's also a lot of interest in developing substrates that nerves, blood vessels, etc can grow on or are compatible with certain techniques. 

This is all conditioned on you remaining somewhat interested in chemical engineering and doing well in your research+coursework. If your heart isn't in it and you're likely to do badly, I would certainly switch; I just don't think it's essential.

Good luck!