1) What made you pursue the field of Biomedical Engineering?

When I was in high school, I was struggling to find out what I wanted to do. I think a lot of people struggle with this when they are young- they don’t really know what they want to do in the future. So my mom asked what I didn’t want to do. That was a much easier question for me to answer. I knew I didn’t want to pursue a humanities field. I loved math and science. I didn’t know much about engineering. When I was searching for a major, I came across biomedical engineering. Biology was one of my favorite courses in high school, and I really liked biology and the health aspect of the career. I looked into the program further, and there weren’t many schools that offered this major which helped me narrow down schools. When I visited Worcester Polytechnic Institute, I really enjoyed the environment there and decided to join WPI as an undergrad

2) What has your journey been like, so far, in this field? How did you choose academia?

Once I graduated from WPI with a major in Biomedical Engineering and a minor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, I went straight for my PhD. I joined Stevens Institute of Technology, and the reason why I chose Stevens is because I really liked WPI- it was a small science and engineering institution and Stevens had that same feel. I liked the idea of research and decided to get a PhD after talking to some of my professors at WPI. I got my master’s and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Stevens, and after graduation I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do next. I applied to a bunch of jobs, and I actually received offers from some of them, but they weren’t really what I was looking for. My advisor at Stevens, Dr. Vikki Hazelwood, who is still there as the Biomedical Engineering Program Director, offered for me to teach there. It was only supposed to be for a year, but extended that time for almost five years! I found out that I really liked teaching, and being a faculty member. I thought I was going to go into industry, but I really liked working with the students- a lot! I went on to manage the graduate programs for my department, which at the time included programs like Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Chemical Biology, other smaller programs, for about 3 years. Now I am here at Brown.

3) Were you always involved in research, even as an undergraduate student? What was your research project in graduate school?

At WPI, we were required to do a lot of projects within our courses. Because of my minor, I have always been drawn to these electrically minded projects. While I was there, I did a project on a respiration rate monitor for third-world countries. I developed a diabetic activity monitor with a team as a senior capstone project under Dr. Robert Pera, who has since retired. At Stevens, I worked with Dr. Vikki Hazelwood, and I really liked her work because she wasn’t a traditional professor. She had worked in the industry for 20 years and she did a lot of translational research. She worked with Hackensack Medical Center in New Jersey, and I did a couple of projects with her. For my main dissertation project, I was part of a team of electrical engineers and emergency department physicians, and we developed a system that could wirelessly transmit portable ultrasound videos from the back of a moving ambulance to hospitals, in real time. This was crucial for patients with internal bleeding. I specifically looked at the quality of the ultrasound videos and performed quantitative analysis on the quality of the videos. Ultrasound is a very qualitative metric, and the physician has to perform diagnosis based on the video. Assessing quality loss for the viability of the video was important, so I created a quality threshold. It was very cool, and very wireless in nature. I had to learn a lot for this project since I didn’t have a lot of background in wireless systems.

What was your favorite course to teach as a faculty member?

While I taught the undergraduate level Intro to Biomedical Engineering course every semester, my favorite courses to teach were always at the graduate level. I taught two different discussion based courses that were technical in nature but presented as discussion-based courses. One was an engineering writing course where students were required to write review papers. Around half of the class would publish their work once the class ended.

Of all of the work/publications you have been a part of, is there one that you are most proud of? Why?

I know the answer to this! The one work I am most proud of started out as a senior capstone project that I mentored. It was with the Navy SEALs. The group was tasked with making a smart floatation device. The problem with current floatation devices is that as soon as they come in contact with water, the life preservation device deploys. While this is ideal for emergencies, a lot of their work involves being in water without requiring the device to be activated. Most of the time, they won’t wear these devices if they deploy prematurely, which is leaves them unprotected in case something bad happens. The idea was to design a device that would only deploy under a certain depth of water for a certain amount of time. The first group I worked with only had two students. They did a nice proof of concept device. The next year we did the project again, because this was a funded project, and the second group made a great prototype. We went to Virginia Beach to test the device at a Navy base. It was very cool. I received an additional grant to keep working on that project. I worked on it all summer, and gave the materials back to the Navy SEALs. The last I heard, the device was in production. Just knowing that we can help the U.S. military in some way makes me proud. Plus there was a lot of pool testing it- what type of research allows you to jump in the pool and test a prototype? I didn’t but my students did!

6) Did you ever do experiments that didn’t work? What kept you moving forward?

I did a lot of those! There are a lot of things that could go wrong in engineering. I took a couple of different approaches, actually. I remember the first few projects during my PhD, one in particular, didn’t work out. It wasn’t something that I did or that the idea was bad, but it just wasn’t a feasible project. We didn’t have sufficient resources to carry out the project. After further assessing, we realized that there wasn’t a clinical need. So sometimes that’s the case. Other times, because I work with electrical engineering projects, a device could work great one day, and fail the next day. You just really have to be patient. Every failure and misstep is a learning experience. Even though it can get frustrating, it comes back to you as a learning process. Things always work out for the better.

7) How do you like Brown so far? What are your plans for the Brown ScM. program over the next few years? What are you looking forward to the most?

I am very excited to be here at Brown. Brown is unlike any of the other schools I’ve been a part of, in the past. It is very diverse- there is science and engineering, arts, business, everything! Brown has a lot of really great resources and facilities. I am excited about the medical school and doing clinical projects. I also like Providence so far. It’s not too metropolitan, or too small. I like working with graduate students, especially master’s students. Working with students is my favorite part, and I’ve already met a lot of the master’s students.
In the short term, I definitely want to grow our master’s program- we want to grow the student population, but also want to make sure that we can customize the program and give more career development help to the students. We’d like to get more applicants to the program, and make sure that everybody has a research project in the area they’d like to be in, and create more diverse projects. Besides working on the program, I would like to continue with my own research. I think it’s really important, and Brown is a fantastic place to do research. The master’s program is my top priority, but I’d also like to continue with my research.
I am looking forward to meeting people: the students, getting to know the faculty, their research, and becoming a member of the Brown community. And for the next academic year, I am looking forward to bringing in the next cohort of students, because it will be the first class that I will bring in. So I am really excited for that! I am super excited to be back in New England: I’m a person that loves the outdoors, I am a runner, and I like hiking. I am looking forward to be able to enjoy being outside in New England again!

8) What three qualities are most important for insuring success as a researcher?

Persistence (or motivation)- you definitely need it in engineering, hard work, and a good attitude- a good attitude gets you a long way! Research can be frustrating, but if you don’t let that bring you down. If you have a positive attitude and carry that with you when you interact with people, that positive attitude can get you really far.