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Name: Molly Miller Brown Affiliation: Alumni '02 Company/School: Duke Position: PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering Materials Science Degree(s) Earned: BS in Mechanical Engineering, Brown University
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What is your background in biotechnology? I completed an honor’s thesis after a year of research with Dr. J.J. Crisco working with quantifying the movement of the cervical spine. While working with Dr. Crisco I also did measurements on the mechanical properties of vertebrae and intervertebral discs. I am now working on determining exactly what controls the optical properties of nanoparticles and how we can “tune” the area of sensitivity that exists around such particles. This also involves functionalizaton of the particles such that they would attract a molecule of interest in solution or in the body. What did you do after graduating from Brown? I went directly into graduate school and am currently a second year PhD student at Duke University. I am in the Mechanical Engineering Materials Science department but work more on the materials end of things. I am a fellow in the Center for Biologically Inspired Materials and Materials Systems which allows me to interact with people who come from a wide range of backgrounds and have an equally wide range of interests in their research. What graduate schools did you apply to? Johns Hopkins, Duke, Georgia Tech, Stanford What features impacted your decisions?
I wanted a school that had a blend of social life and research. It was important to me that I feel as though I could get along with and talk to the graduate students that were there. I also wanted a school that did not expect me to be in the lab 12 hours a day 7 days a week (at least not all of the time). As an American graduate student I also looked for a school that had a significant number of other American graduate students in my department.
What advice would you give to seniors applying to graduate school? Listen to the professors at Brown, they know a lot about the research going on at other schools and see a lot of these professors at conferences every year. Also, do your research by asking current graduate students (either ones that graduated from Brown and are now elsewhere or graduate students in labs at schools you are interested in). Graduate students will gladly email back and forth with prospective students to try and help them get a feel of what goes on at a particular school. But also keep in mind that if you really like a school but haven’t decided on a specific professor, you will likely be able to find someone that you would want to work with and could find an interesting project to work on. It is also important that you like your advisor and feel that you can interact with and talk to them. At times this is even more important that what your research topic is. You may have a project that you really like but if you can’t get your advisor to sit down and talk with you about it, your chances of success diminish greatly.
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