Faculty, staff, and students gathered on May 19-20 for the 2019 BME & Biotechnology PhD Programs Retreat with the mission to advance our research and training programs through scientific presentations, professional development activities, dialogue, and community building. The overnight retreat at the Whispering Pines Conference Center in West Greenwich, RI kicked off on Sunday evening with a poster session and cocktail reception. The graduate student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (gBMES) organized team building games such as gBMES bingo. Following dinner, all participated in a Diversity and Inclusion Workshop to develop a common understanding of community values, strengths, and opportunities for improvement. The evening ended with s’mores and conversation by the campfire.

The Monday programming kicked off with opening remarks by retreat committee chair Kareen Coulombe and a town hall style meeting for students to voice suggestions for graduate programming in BME at Brown. Vikas Srivastava, one of our newest BME faculty members at Brown, then provided his insights on BME research, careers, and beyond in a talk entitled “An Accidental Researcher.” Srivastava shared his experiences bouncing back and forth between academia and industry from undergraduate study in India, master’s study at the University of Rhode Island, and an industry position through a PhD at MIT and 8 years at ExxonMobil to recently joining the Brown faculty. He shared that common themes to success across his experiences were solid fundamentals, critical thinking skills, and problem solving abilities.

Edith Mathiowitz then introduced her former PhD student Michael Harrison ’95 PhD’07 (Medical Science) to deliver the keynote address.  Harrison is currently Director, Innovation at Eli Lilly and Company. After highlighting some of Eli Lilly’s recent innovations, Harrison provided his personal advice to guide the future paths of our PhD students.

1. Know yourself.
2. Don’t be a jerk. Be a “Yes and…” person.
3. Prioritize, simplify, and focus.
4. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity. Find a good one and work hard.
5. Don’t be afraid of changing directions, but be willing to accept the consequences.
6. Write your own story.

Srivastava and Harrison were then joined by Nicholas Kaiser PhD’19 for a discussion panel on getting into industry as a PhD scientist/engineer.  Kaiser defended his thesis on April 25^th and has been (successfully!) navigating the job market for post-grad opportunities.

Following lunch, students were able to enjoy the beautiful grounds of Whispering Pines on a gorgeous spring day. The final event of the day was an elevator pitch competition.  All students were asked to prepare and deliver a 90-sec pitch they might give at a professional networking event to a small team of peers and faculty advisors. Speakers were then chosen at random and coached by their team to polish their pitch.  Huy Cu, Cameron Baptista, Amanda Khoo, Radu Darie, Sylvia Sarnik, Nicole Provenza, Bardiya Akhbari, and Kiara Lee all delivered engaging pitches, but Baptista and Team #7 were voted the winners! Closing remarks were given by Vicki Colvin, Director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering, before all returned to Brown with new perspectives and ideas.