The Brown BME family welcomes students who call different cities, states, and countries around the world ‘home’. But BME alumna Kelsey Sandquist has a different definition for ‘home’, “I wrote my CommonApp essay on being asked by people where I am from,” she said. Although Kelsey was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, she spent half of her life outside the United States. “My mom had an ABC plan- anywhere but Cincinnati,” Kelsey explained, “We moved around a lot- from Seattle, Washington to Geneva, Switzerland; San Jose, Costa Rica; to Baltimore, Maryland, when I joined Brown. So, my definition of ‘home’ is wherever my family is. It travels with me wherever I go.” At present, Kelsey is residing in Santa Rosa, California, and is working at Medtronic in the Research and Development Department for the Coronary and Renal Denervation Department. “The coronary devices are used to treat diseases of the coronary arteries that require a catheterization procedure to treat the blockages- such as stents, balloons, catheters, etc, and the renal denervation is a new therapy we are working on that is investigational for the treatment of hypertension.” Kelsey described her journey from Brown to Medtronic as “a little bit of persistence, and a lot of luck!” She was sitting in the Project Room in the Engineering Research Center, when the President of the Brown chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) asked Kelsey if she’d like to take an extra spot they had to go to the SWE conference. SWE is a non-profit educational and service organization in the United States and has over 300 student sections throughout the country, including Brown’s undergraduate chapter. Sandquist took up the offer and attended the conference, which gave her the opportunity to interact and network with other women in the field and with companies such as Medtronic. “I got an interview for a spinal position at Medtronic, and although I didn’t get that position, my resume made it through the Medtronic system, and I got a call from Santa Rosa. I was sitting in the hotel room after the conference when Medtronic called me for a phone screening. I ran out of the conference room so fast that I forgot my keys, and didn’t even have a pen to take notes!” Kelsey recalled, “I was trying to sound coherent during the call, and the company said they were interested in me. I had received an offer from BD (Becton Dickinson) at the time and was able to leverage that for Medtronic to fly me out here for an interview. I’ve been working here for two years now!” 

Before coming to Brown, Kelsey completed high school education in San Jose and Costa Rica, and she was a focused student. “I had helped my elder brother with his college applications. When my time had come, I created a spreadsheet with data I had collected from online databases for all the schools I was considering.” Brown’s strong undergraduate focus, academic rigor, and location played an important part in Sandquist’s decision making, but that was not all, “When I visited Brown, everyone on campus seemed very happy, and they were so helpful. The campus felt like home so although my school decision started out to be analytical, my final decision was very sentimental.”  

As a student, Kelsey always enjoyed math and science, “I was interested in engineering of some sort, but it was the book, ‘The Brain That Changes Itself’ that got me hooked on neuroscience.” She received this book on neuroplasticity as a Chemistry Award from a PTA member, and by the end of that summer, Kelsey had read all the neuroscience books she could lay her hands on. “It was the fusion of neuroscience and engineering that led me to Biomedical Engineering and throughout my journey at Brown, I didn’t waver from it. BME is such a wide ranging field, and there’s so much to do in it,” she said. 

While at Brown, Kelsey certainly ventured outside neuroscience, “I had been a gymnast growing up and had all sorts of orthopedic injuries. Hence, orthopedic and biomechanics was another field of interest for me.” She joined the Bioengineering lab at the Rhode Island Hospital, run by Dr. Crisco, where she worked on a longitudinal carpometacarpal osteoarthritis study. “I started working in the lab the summer before my junior year, and I worked on a graphical user interface on MATLAB to do data analysis of that longitudinal study.” Kelsey was also a part of the Brown Formula Racing (Formula Society of Automotive Engineers- FSAE) since freshman year, “It was the best hands-on engineering experience I had at Brown, and it has helped me in my career as well!” The Brown Formula Racing is a team that designs, builds, tests, and competes with a small formula-style race car in a competition, where 120 teams from all over the world come to compete. The FSAE competition consists of safety tests, presentations to judges and dynamic events, including a 20-lap endurance race. “My sophomore year, I was a design lead of a subsystem, and by senior year, I was one of the co-captains of the team. We ran into difficulties at competition during my first 3 years, and so, my goal during senior year was to complete the endurance race,” Kelsey recalled of her time as a part of the team. “We learned something from each failure, and we finally completed the endurance race- for the first time in 5 years. It was a big moment, and I am very proud of it.” Kelsey talked about the importance of the experience she had with the full design cycle as a part of that team, which is not possible to experience in a semester-long project. To date, Kelsey attributes her project management and people management skills to her time at Brown Formula Racing. “It was a fun group of people, and it’s an excellent playground to apply and strengthen your engineering knowledge.” 

Sandquist also reflects on her time as a student and TA in Dr. Borton’s Instrumentation Design and Implantable Devices courses, “They were both hands-on classes, and my lab partner, who is now my boyfriend, and I worked on the tandem bike lab- we were the first to do so in years! We learned to get systems up and running. When we were TAs, it was interesting to see how the new students approached the problems.” Kelsey also mentioned how Brown had prepared her for the industry, as an engineer, “Brown teaches you how to learn and how to collaborate. I’d like to highlight the efforts that Dr. Kofron and Dr. Tripathi have been making towards creating a capstone for BME and my year was the first year that the class was up and running. They did a great job at teaching us some of the principles that I still use today. At the time I didn’t grasp it as much because we had a short time to design a medical device, but now I realize that I still use them at work.” 

Life as a BME student is challenging, and Kelsey shared her secret to a good work-life balance, “Brown has a lot of fun classes- I took an anthropology class on human skeleton, a class on turtle physiology, and even a religious studies class on apocalypse. I always made sure to not overload my schedule and have a fun class each semester.” One organization that Kelsey was an active part of and had leadership positions in is the Brown Aerial Arts Society, “I was in instructor for the beginner lessons. We taught silk, static trapeze etc.” She still continues to do silks on weekdays and weekends, “When you are in the industry, you have free time and weekends. I also go hiking, and I read and knit, too. And there’s always something happening in Santa Rosa.” Currently, Kelsey is also managing new interns in Medtronic as a peer manager and is also helping to organize a STEM festival for 20,000 kids in October. 

After working in industry, Kelsey has some important advice for students seeking jobs in the medical device sector. “It’s very helpful to get hands-on experience of some sort. Whether it’s through a club or a lab, it shows that you can apply what you have learned. Be persistent in the job search. You will get a lot of responses with ‘no,’ but you only need one person to say ‘yes.’ And whenever you end up where you want to be, don’t be afraid to speak up! Younger engineers tend to downplay their ideas and opinions, but they have very fresh perspectives and new ways of thinking and doing things. They bring an excitement and optimism.” Continuing to learn and improve is also an important key to success. She adds, “Learning never really stops. Medtronic as a company is really invested in its employees. We have a lot of workshops and training opportunities in these large companies. I try to make the most of those opportunities as well.”