Critical Thinking & Analytical Skills
I have honed my quantitative and analytical skills over the past three semesters, taking Biophysical Chemistry and Thermodynamics, Organic Chemistry and Biocomputation. While Michigan Engineering is very demanding, I have been able to achieve a 3.95 GPA. It has been amazing to see the connections between my understanding of calculus and the application of those skills within the field of BME For example, using calculus to track where a prosthetic is in space. I am starting to see the synergies across the foundational components of the BME curriculum.
The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is an internationally recognized center for primary research in bioengineering and nanomedicine with approximately 200 researchers from ~ 20 countries. During the summer of 2022, I worked full time for 8 weeks in a lab characterizing organoids and cardio spheres to model diabetes. Working in a renowned lab that is focused on solving some of society's biggest problems required me to evolve my thinking from the theoretical to the applied and overall, become a more rigorous thinker. This experience made me step up my game and prepared me for my subsequent lab experiences at Almirall, Life Magnetics and Michigan Medicine.
Curiosity & Passion
"Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”
James Clerk Maxwell
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James Clerk Maxwell’s quote encapsulates my mindset. Reframing ignorance and transforming it from a deficit into a foundational starting point and an advantage when problem solving unleashed my sense of possibility. I have a deep thirst for knowledge, and I love learning through questioning the unknown. My childhood career imaginings spanned from Marine, to astronaut, to ultimately biomedical engineer/doctor, the common link being the ability to directly help people.
I have a passion to help people through biomedical innovation grounded in a deep, first-hand understanding of the problem set. Designing solutions in an environment removed from patients and their experiences, uninformed by the realities of clinical environments or ignorant of the input and feedback of practitioners is not for me. I want to be at the epicenter of those interactions using first hand insights to shape my hypotheses and solutions.
Being effective in these environments requires calm problem solving grounded in an unswerving desire to help. I have found myself at the side of several people who ended up needing emergency medical treatment, and I don’t panic; I go into a calm, focused place. A family story proves the point. While spearfishing on our family vacation, a fish’s dorsal fin spine pierced my cousin’s glove, puncturing his thumb. His hand turned purple, painfully swelling up to three times its normal size. While my aunt, an ER doctor, recommended typical swelling treatment of applying a cold compress, I decided my best contribution would be identifying the fish. As I dove into the depths of Google, reverse image searching, my family went back to their fun. I read through fish identification encyclopedias by region but could not find the species. After an hour, I finally matched the description: A venomous dusky spinefoot! At this point, my aunt was ashore. The swelling was still progressing, and the compress was not working. I learned that the venom was similar to that of a stonefish, one of the most dangerous fish in the world. While I did not want to incite panic, I knew it was essential to understand the venom. Finally, I stumbled across a twenty-year-old journal after using the fish’s Latin name. Cold water actually exacerbated the effects of the venom, and hot water was essential to break down the toxin. My intense desire to help my cousin, my attention to observing his symptoms and my geeky aptitude for research shaped my ability to navigate my cousin’s emergency with focus and purpose.
Collaboration & Communication
Working in labs at Almirall, IBEC and the University of Barcelona has enabled me to participate in the scientific process, not just observe or read about it. One of the most striking aspects of the process is how collaborative and iterative it is. Participating in brainstorming sessions, working on teams to refine an idea, identifying points of collaboration in a genuinely truth-seeking and supportive environment is amongst the most rewarding aspects of BME for me.
I gravitate toward environments with dynamic problem solving and foundationally believe it is essential to all aspects of the care experience. In clinical environments, this dynamic is heightened given the complexity and time sensitivity of many medical issues. It is essential to be a team player. To me in a clinical environment, this means enlisting the expertise of a holistic care team that includes specialists, nurses, family and religious advisors, for some. Bringing that same philosophy to bear in an engineering context, it might mean interviewing patients and practioners, bringing in a UI/UX designer, a hardware expert, a software systems expert, maybe an expert in energy consumption and nanotechnology or RF. Being on a team is a critical aspect of my career choice.
Communication skills are essential in working with stakeholders ranging from patients to researchers to investors. My IB high school prioritized writing and presentation skills. I was able to lean on that skill set when for example my supervisor at Almirall asked me to document the company’s official protocol for a new experiment and also present the experiment I designed to the entire in vivo lab.​
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Leadership
Across medicine, engineering and business, leadership is an essential attribute. Whether it is setting a course of treatment, crafting a totally new solution or aligning a team of people behind a common purpose, leading requires thoughtfulness, input and collaboration and ultimately, accountability. I have a strong appreciation for the fact that leadership is a continual and learned skill which requires a willingness to try new things, evolve with feedback or new data and take on incrementally greater responsibility. Moving to Spain and putting myself out there to found a chapter of One Prospr, tutoring girls in India, required me to risk rejection and failure amongst a new group of classmates in a foreign country. The success I had with One Prospr inspired me to also set up ASB’s first blood drive post-Covid, overcoming my self-consciousness to work in Spanish with the local Red Cross. Coming to Michigan and standing for a Senate role in the Engineering Student Government, likewise required me to take risk so that I could advocate for my fellow students.
I feel particularly fortunate that as I think about evolving as a leader in STEM I have had amazing female role models who have inspired me to think about having purpose and impact at scale and on an international level. Dr. Nuria Montserrat, for whom I worked at IBEC, is now the Minister of Research and Universities of Catalonia. Seeing firsthand how she has very authentically leveraged her experiences as a researcher to advocate for other researchers and university interests has given me a sense of how multi-dimensional and evolving leadership can be.
Creativity
Biomedical engineering enables me to use both sides of my brain, simultaneously exercising creativity and very structured thinking. This intersection is my “happy place”. While some would say “there is only one answer” to a math or science problem and might find that limiting, I love the fact that there are typically multiple ways to solve a problem and I was fortunate to go to a middle school that actually forced us to come up with 3 ways to solve the “problem of the week”. That seventh grade training has ended up being a great life skill. I was able to apply that mindset this summer at Almirall when my supervisor tasked me with designing my own experiment to compare different reference compounds to our lab’s new inhibitors of interest. Designing your own experiment requires you to hone in on a very specific problem definition, consider the most viable test cases from a baseline knowledge set and be clear on what is a meaningful result as well as have a view on how to refine or modify the experiment. It was daunting but also incredibly fulfilling to apply my theoretical learnings to a real world problem.
Acting as an engineering design consultant for Blue Design lets me tap my creative side. Blue Design is effectively an in-house design incubator for UM Medicine, consulting with Michigan Medicine researchers to prototype capabilities using technologies such as 3D modeling. My current project is developing a better suture model kit for medical students
Lab Skills
Confocal Microscopy
Fluorescence Microscopy
Western Blotting
Multi-color Flow Cytometry
Computer Science Skills
C++, Python, MatLab
PowerPoint, Excel, Word
Language Skills
English: Native language, working fluency
Spanish: Proficient, moderate fluency