Jessica Bloom, EnvE'11, has received an honorable mention from the Morris K. Udall Scholarship Foundation. The contest recognizes students with excellent academic records and an interest in careers in environmental public policy, health care and tribal public policy. Jessica studied with Cornell Abroad at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is a founder of the Windy Island Campaign to promote effective wind turbine code on Long Island, is a member of the Cornell Solar Decathlon team and the Engineers for a Sustainable World. [EnvE, CALS]
Ben Cammarata, BE'11, (pictured, far right) is a member of the iGEM team and featured in the Spring '10 Cornell Engineering Magazine article, Living Machines: Genetically engineering solutions to win. Ben also collaborated on a BOOM (bits on our minds) project, Genetically engineering a heavy metal biosensor using B. sutilis. Ben has received a prestigious 2011 Merrill Scholar Award. Ben is hoping to land a research job before eventually applying to medical school. [BE, CoE]
Chunhin (Sam) Chan, BE'11, has been doing research under the tutelage of Professor Bonassar (BME) and was selected for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Harvard University, with Professor David Mooney, Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has worked with multi-layered PLG scaffolds, proteoglycan and quantification assays, and cell cultures. He has been on the Dean's list every semester at Cornell, transferring after two semesters on the Dean's lest at Binghamton University. He is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, and speaks fluent Cantonese. [ ]
Matt Giambrone, BE'11, is a founding member of the Theta Tau Professional Engineering Fraternity at Cornell. He has also held numerous leadership positions in Cornell's Delta Phi Fraternity: Secretary, House Manager, Sustainability Chairman, Rush Secretary and Steward. He has worked internships with Bracco Diagnostics, Inc. (Princeton, NJ), OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and BRData Retail BOSS (both in Melville, NY). He has been on the Dean's list every semester. [BE, Minor: Business, CALS]
Alyssa Henning, BE'11, is active in Cornell's Phoenix Society, CUWinds, and iGEM. She and the iGEM team (that won a bronze medal at the 2009 competition at MIT) are featured in the cover article for the Spring '10 Cornell Engineering Magazine article, Living Machines: Genetically engineering solutions to win. See more in her College of Engineering Student Profile. [BE, CoE]
Alexander Kopache, BE'11, lead the drivetrain team for the Cornell Baja Racing Team which took first place at the national competition in Rochester in June 2010. Cornell Chronicle Story [BE, CALS]
Matthew Mikhail, BE'11, co-founded an organization "What's in a Doctor's Bag" geared towards relieving the anxiety elementary school children commonly feel towards doctors' visits. The group visits elementary school classes, performs skits, and engages the students in activities designed to familiarize them with the unnecessarily frightening aspects of health care. He is a Hunter R. Rawlings Cornell Presidential Research Scholar, and is featured in Cornell's "The Research Paper" magazine for his work in Professor Dan Luo's lab, research designed to perfect the mechanisms of recombinant protein technology. He is a McMullen's Deans Scholar, a Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society officer, and a member of the Alpha Epsilon Bioengineering Honor Society. He has been on the Dean's list every semester. [ ]
Francine Mitto, BE'10, is the President of the Cornell Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. She is also active as a team member in Cornell's Biofuels Technology Assessment & Industrial Ecology Design Project Team, working on biofuels development, and as a team leader on Cornell's AguaClara Research Team, using MathCAD to retrofit the dose controller design and execute experiments to recreate conditions in the AguaClara water treatment plants in Honduras. She has worked as a computer lab operator since coming to Cornell, and is a TA for BEE 3299 Sustainable Development. [BE, concentration: Bioenvironmental engineering, CoE]
Christine Pitner, BE'11, won a 2010 Diversity Programs in Engineering (DPE) Undergraduate of the Year distinction. Her other awards include: 2010 SWE Directorship of the Year, SWE Class of 2011 Scholarship, Cornell Tradition Fellow, and Cornell SWE Freshman of the Year. Christine was the guiding force, working with Professor Ashim Datta, on a handbook, Biological Engineering and its Possibilities for You, intended to "introduce current or prospective BE students to various career options that are available and to provide broad descriptions of the areas". Christine has done her undergraduate research under the supervision of Professor Antje Baeumner and is highlighted in the Cornell Chronicle article Researchers develop portable, quick and cheap test to detect deadly virus. She has held numerous leadership positions in SWE and IBE, and worked with Cornell Orientation for three summers, two as a supervisor. [BE, Minor: Biomedical Engineering, CoE]
Shailly Prasad, BE'11, is co-president of the Cornell Chapter of the Institute of Biological Engineers. She has worked for three years as a researcher in Cornell's BME Department on an Honors Thesis involving designing, building and testing an agarose-based microfluidic chemotaxis chamber to model in vitro conditions for testing a observing mammalian sperm cell responses to chemical attractants. She has worked In the BEE Student Services Center for two years, and has been on the Dean's List for four semesters. [BE, minor: Biology, CALS]
Allison Truhlar, BE'11, serves as Philanthropy Chair for the Tau Beta Pi Honor Society, as Tutoring Chair for the No-Nun-De-Kah Honor Society and has been inducted into the Alpha Epsilon Honor Society. She is currently working on a research project for her honors thesis with funding awarded through the Dextra Undergraduate Research Endowment Fund, has completed an NSF-IGERT training grant working with surface water-groundwater exchange and received funding though an NSF REU program where she studied the morphology of Fire Island, NY. She is a tutor with Cornell's Learning Strategies Center and was head TA for BEE 2600, Principles of Biological Engineering. Allison has been on the dean's list for seven semesters; every semester she's been at Cornell, and is an officer in the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. Allison has been awarded a prestigious Gates-Churchill Scholarship and will be going to graduate school at Cambridge University. She has also been awarded a 2011 NSF fellowship [BE, CALS]
Tracy Cheung, BE'10, is a member of the Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (CUAUV) Team that earned first place in the 12th annual competition in San Diego, August, 2009. Cornell Chronicle Story. Tracy also received a 1st place win in the IBE Research Poster contest at the association's annual meeting gin Santa Clara, CA, Spring 2009. Tracy's poster nabbed 2nd place at Cornell's IBE student chapter's 7th annual BioEXPO, March, 2009. Her poster is titled "BAEC proliferation on variably compliant polyacrylamide gels" (Tracy's research was done with the Dept of Biomedical Engineering). She received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and will be attending the Biomedical Engineering PhD program at Duke University [BE, concentration: Biomedical Engineering, CoE]
Matt Conlon, BE'10, has received a CALS 2010 Academic Excellence Award. See his Chronicle Online Senior Profile and interview. Matt has been very active working with Cornell Outdoor Education; helping students with teamwork development at the challenge course, leading pre-orientation trips for incoming freshman and teaching physical education courses. He served as webmaster for the Ho-Nun-De-Kah Honor Society, and worked as a tutor and mentor for Boynton Middle School-ers, Costa Rican Sophomores and at-risk teens in Lake Placid, NY. He also went on a service trip to Costa Rica where he taught about composting. He graduated in seven semesters, was on the dean’s list for all seven, and was recognized in CS 2110 with the Grand Prize for Best Final Project Enhancement. [BE, Concentration: Bioprocess engineering, CALS]
Allison Danner, EnvE'10, was featured in the College of Engineering Magazine article, Green with EnvE, on the accreditation of Cornell's EnvE degree. She chose environmental engineering because "... I wanted to learn both the science to understand the natural world and the environmental issues we face, as well as the technical skills to be able to find solutions to the problems". [Double Major: EnvE-CE, CALS]  |
The Cayuga Nature Center gets a fall cleaning by, from left, Josh Rosario 10, Neesha Schnepf 13 and Vanish Grover 10 during the Into the Streets day of service Oct. 31.
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Vanish Grover, EnvE'10, is President of the AguaClara Club, also contributing work to research on chlorine flow controllers with the Honduran water treatment plant project. He is also the "B" Vice President of the Delta Chi Fraternity. He has volunteered with Cornell's Solar Decathlon and the Engineering Ambassador's program. He has had research assignments with the Cornell College of Veterinary Science, the Davisson Lab, and Weill Cornell medical College. He won a College of Engineering 2009 Distinguished Honor award for his coop work with Woodard & Curran. Vanish is planning to attend Law School at NYU. [EnvE, CALS]Jason Inzana, BE'10, was named to the ESPN The Magazine/CoSIDA Academic All-District I First Team in men's track and field and cross country. Jason has concluded his pole vaulting career ranking 6th on Cornell's all-time list. Jason was inducted into the Cornell Athletic Department's 400 Club for Fall 2009. The 400 Club is for student athletes who have achieved a 4.0 grade point average while participating in varsity sports. [BE, minor: Biomedical Engineering, CALS]
Edward Kwee, BE'10, won the College of Engineering 2009 Co-op Student of the Year award for his work with the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation. Students are nominated for this award by their supervisors, for "demonstrating leadership, initiative and innovation" in their co-op position. While at Cornell, he has obtained tissue engineering research experience in the Bonassar Lab, and received an Engineering Learning Initiatives UG Research Grant allowing him to work in the Tan lab on biomineralized surfaces functioning as non-viral DNA delivery systems. Edward plans to attend Case Western Reserve University in their Biomedical Engineering PhD program. [BE, minors: Biomedical Engineering, Engineering Management, Southeast Asian Studies, CoE]
Bianca Lane, BE'11, is a member of the Army ROTC. This allowed her to serve as a "leader, strategist, motivator and counselor" in her cadet battalion. She also applied these skills as a House Manager for Pi Beta Phi and as a Resident Advisor. She has fed her interest in the biomedical field with a research internship at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, for two summers, and worked in the Cornell Biomechanics Lab. She was honored in 2009 with the Lt. Colonel John B. Davenport Award for Academic Excellence in Engineering. [BE, concentration: Biomedical Engineering, CoE]
Stephen Linderman, BE'10, is a Rawlings Presidential Research Scholar from Rome, N.Y. He is a 2010 Merrill Presidential Scholar and honored BEE Professor Kifle Gebremedhin as the "Cornell professor most influential in his development". He was also named a 2009 Goldwater Scholar. He is working with the DeLisa Research Group at Cornell to develop and use a reporter system that correlates protein interactions to growth on ampicillin and to characterize and engineer protein-protein interactions. He is the administrative director and sings bass in the a cappella group, The Class Notes. He is a member of the National Scholars Honor Society, the Golden Key International Honor Society, and was a 2008 recipient of Cornell's Greek Scholars of the Year Award. He has received a prestigious Churchill Scholarship, which allows him to go to Cambridge university for a year of graduate study. [BE, Concentration: Biomedical, CALS]
Brian Macpherson, EnvE'10, was featured in the College of Engineering Magazine article, Green with EnvE, on the accreditation of Cornell's EnvE degree. [EnvE, CALS]
Hyeongsu Park, BE'10, (pictured - middle) has been chosen as a 2010 Merrill Scholar. He has honored BEE Professor Dan Luo as the "Cornell professor most influential in his development". He is ranked #1 in the College of Engineering Class of 2010. He is a DNA Hydrogel Research assistant in the Luo Lab, and is coauthor of a paper, "Photocrosslinked DNA nanospheres for drug delivery". He is President of the Cornell Undergraduate Korean Church, and sings tenor in the a cappella group, Last Call. He has been a TA and grader for BEE 3500 Biological and Bioenvironmental Transport Processes and BEE4530 Computer-Aided Engineering: Applications to Biomedical Processes since Fall 2009. [BE, CoE]
Jessica Wind, BE'10, is taking two minors and manages Cornell's football team. She worked as a summer intern for Johnson & Johnson. She is a Golden Key International Honor Society member, and participates in the CUEmpowers mentoring program, the Engineering Peer Advisor program, and various Hillel events and programs. See more in her College of Engineering Student Profile. [BE, Concentration: Biomedical, Minor: Business, CoE]
Carli Flynn, BE/EnvE'09, has pursued many interests in her time at Cornell; such as sustainable engineering, animal activism, and Spanish theater performances. She spent her entire junior year abroad in Santander, Spain with the first year of College of Engineering's Cornell-Cantabria exchange. She also went to Chiapas, Mexico with IARD 4010 which "taught me more in two weeks than any other class at Cornell". See more in Carli's CoE profile. Carli had a paper published in The Triple Helix (The International Journal of Science, Society , and Law), "Factory Farms and the Environmental and Health Consequences". Carli plans to go to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon studying Civil and Environmental Engineering. [BE/EnvE double major, concentration: Bioenvironmental Engineering, CoE]
Lauren Dugard, BE'09, spent her junior and senior years working in Professor Antje Baeumner's Bioanalytical Microsystems & Biosensors lab. She will be joining Johnson&Johnson's internship program after graduation, taking her first assignment in Puerto Rico. Lauren's research project was entitled "Adhesive contact printing for PMMA and glass in biosensing Microfluidic devices". [BE, CoE]
Moshe (Evan) Gorin, BE'09, received a CALS 2009 Academic Excellence Award. He is a Rawlings Presidential Research Scholar who did his work on Modeling of Cyclin E in Professor John March's Metabolic and Signal Engineering Lab. [BE, CALS]
Scott Hayes, BE'09, sings baritone in Cornell's a cappella group, Class Notes. He also has spent his junior and senior years working in Professor Antje Baeumner's Bioanalytical Microsystems & Biosensors lab. [BE, concentration: Biomedical Engineering, CoE]
Tara Holter, BE'09, was co-chair of the Engineering Ambassadors this year, and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. She spent her junior and senior years working in Professor Antje Baeumner's Bioanalytical Microsystems & Biosensors lab. Tara will be attending medical school at SUNY Upstate Medical College after graduation. [BE, concentrations: Bioprocess, Biomedical, CoE]
Ben Pen Jui Hung, BE'09, has distinguished himself during his Cornell experience with research. His work, with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is on chondrocyte and mesenchymal stem cell adhesion to cartilage. He has two publications in conference proceedings. Not content with staying in the lab, Ben has also collected impressive teaching experience, as a teaching assistant in Biochemistry, Computer Science, and Heat/Mass Transfer, as well as with the CoE's Academic Excellence Workshops in Multivariable Calculus, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra. [BE, concentration: Biomedical Engineering, CoE]
Becky Katz, BE/EnvE'09, has taken advantage of numerous opportunities, including an engineering COOP at Woodard & Curran, research in Cornell's Zinder Anaerobic Microbial Lab, and Tongoarrio National Park in Taupo, New Zealand. Becky has also taken part in Alternative Spring Breaks; volunteering in NYC at a homeless shelter, volunteering with SewGreen, an Ithaca group encouraging sustainability through fashion, and working with AquaClara, a CEE design team working on water treatment plants for towns in Honduras. Becky will be going to graduate school at KAUST in Saudi Arabia. Becky states "opportunities have presented themselves to me because of Cornell's incredible research and connections". [BE/EnvE double major, concentration: Bioenvironmental Engineering, CALS]
Colette Kopon, BE'09, has served as president of the CUWinds ensemble group this year. She has been to Costa Rica twice on music/service tours, bringing donated instruments and providing musical instruction and performances for 'high-need' areas. Another service project Colette helps with is 'service through music ambitions' to an Ithaca school and one in Philadelphia. Ezra Story. Colette performs on the euphonium, which looks like a small tuba and sounds similar to a french horn or trombone. Colette took one semester of Study Abroad in Perugia, Italy, and speaks fluent Italian. Rounding out her Cornell experience is research work, with the AguaClara program in CEE and with BEE Professor Beth Ahner on ligands produced by certain types of algae that bind heavy metals. Colette is a counselor with the Empathy, Assistance & Referral Service for students (EARS), and took Wilderness Reflections Guide Training. Colette is an Engineering Global Fellow. Colette will be teaching High School math after graduation. [BE, concentration: Bioprocess Engineering, CALS]
Konstantin Kovtun, BE'09, is a founding member of the Cornell Student Society for Public Health, an organization created to discuss and promote awareness about healthcare infrastructure issues and epidemiological trends that are affecting countries around the world. He currently serves as Technology Secretary for the group. Konstantin found a home at Cornell after his program at Tulane University, New Orleans, was displaced due to Hurricane Katrina. He did a coop at Merck and an Internship at Genzyme Corporation, including collaborating on an industry publication. He has taken courses at Tulane, Tufts, and Harvard, and speaks fluent Russian. Konstantin is planning to attend medical school at Harvard. [BE, concentration: Biomedical, CoE]
Julie Leviter, BE'09, is the deserving recipient of a 2009 Merrill Presidential Scholars Program Award. Merrill Scholars are graduating Cornell seniors who have demonstrated outstanding scholastic achievement, strong leadership ability, and the potential for contributing to society. Merrill Scholars are asked to recognize the Cornell faculty member who most significantly contributed to their college experience, and Julie has selected BEE Professor Mike Walter for that honor (see Julie's Merrill Scholar Essay here). Julie studied abroad for one semester in Edinburgh, Scotland, and completed internships at L'Oreal and the NIH. She has been doing research in BEE in the Baeumner lab and is a TA. Julie has also taken advantage of many extracurricular activities, including a part in the Cornell production 'Mass' at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts and spending Spring Break 2008 working in New Orleans on a Katrina relief effort. Cornell Chronicle Story. Julie is planning to attend medical school at Weill-Cornell. [BE, concentration: Biomedical Engineering, CoE]
Stacey Ohara, BETech'09, became Cornell's first-ever USAG individual national champion on beam with a superb 9.850 score at the 2009 USA Gymnastics Women's Collegiate Championships. Big Red Athletics Story. Stacey also received "Cornell Athlete of the Week" honors. [Biological Engineering Technology, Minor: Business, CALS]
Naweed Paya, BE'09, founded the Cornell Journal of Undergraduate Research, featuring scientific publications from undergraduates doing original research in various departments across the university (Naweed is currently 
serving as president for the journal). The journal includes peer-review by the faculty members in the department related to that research. Naweed also started the project team Genetically Engineered Machines. Cornell Chronicle Story. The team will be completing a synthetic biology project and participate in the annual international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition. Naweed is also Co-president of Cornell's IBE Chapter, and was very involved with this year's BioExpo. Naweed will be working on his Master of Engineering in Systems Engineering at Cornell after graduation. [BE/ECE double major, concentration: Biomedical, CoE]
Nadia Siles, BE'09, as director of corporate affairs for the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, raised $10,000 to help send engineering students to conferences. Her work did not stop there, however, as she performed research with the Solar Oven Team in Ocotal, Nicaragua and CEE's AquaClara program, interned at UW-Madison, studied abroad in Spain, and was Editor-in-Chief of the La Lucha school newspaper (La Associacion Latina) for two years. See more in Nadia's CoE profile. [BE, CoE]
Alexander Veach, BE'09, (pictured, right) is highlighted in the Winter 2011 Ezra Magazines article, Enterprising Alums: Enablers of the app economy. [ ]
Sarah Villarreal, BE'09, has done community service with the Society of Women Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Loaves and Fishes, Encouraging Young Engineering Students, CUEmpower and Engineering Ambassadors. Sarah's research experience includes in the Varner lab, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Kochian lab in Plant Nutrition. Sarah was on the Dean's List for three semesters. Sarah is planning to go on to medical school after a year of research. See her Senior Profile in the Chronicle. [BE, concentration: Biomedical, CoE]
BEE 2008
Floris van Breugel, BE'08, is working on his PhD in Control and Dynamical Systems at Caltech. He is an amazing photographer, see some of his work here, including articles for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: http://www.artinnaturephotography.com/ , http://www.allaboutbirds.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=679#top , http://fody.ornith.cornell.edu/netcommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1771 . See his CALS Alumni Profile here. Floris was a Presidential Research Scholar, working in Hod Lipson's lab on a flapping wing vehicle. See the Cornell Chronicle story, Flap like a butterfly, hover like a bumblebee: Student's flapping wing vehicle is more stable than a helicopter and the CALS News story, BEE Junior Creates a Hovering Ornithopter, and How do we design and make robots that can mimic every aspect of nature? Floris was a 2008 Merrill Scholar, honoring MAE Professor Hod Lipson as the Cornell professor who most influenced his development.
Jason Kahn, BE'08, is working on his PhD in Biological Engineering in Professor Dan Luo's lab. Jason was a 2008 Merrill Scholar, honoring Professor Luo as the Cornell Professor most influential in his development". [BE, CALS]
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Jan Ma BEE'07 Took 1st place in the IBE Undergraduate Poster contest with "Kinetic and Efficacy Analysis of RNA Interference in Stably and Transiently Expressing Cell Lines" covering research she is doing with Prof. Putnam in Biomedical Engineering. |
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Shannon Wheeler BEE'07 Shannon won 1st place in the IBE Bioethics Essay Contest for Students. Her subject was "Perceptions of the Public: The Morals of Sharing our Motives as Bioengineers" |
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Gwen Owens BEE'07 Received an honorable mention in the IBE Bioethics Essay Contest for Students. Gwen's subject was "Ethics of Human Experimentation". |
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Prisca Grace BEE'07 Prisca Grace is a Class of 2007 Banner Bearer. Prisca has also received the Academic Excellence Award and was awarded a full tuition fellowship for an M.Eng. through CoE. |
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Elana Fisher BEE'07 Received an honorable mention in the IBE Bioethics Essay Contest for Students. Elana's subject was "The Ethics of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research". |
BEE 2006
Andrea Ippolito, BE'06, won the 2006 Engineering UG Poster contest and received and MEng from BME in 2007. [BE, CALS]
Virginia Woods, BE'06, won a Whitaker International Fellowship, which gives her support for one academic year at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Imperial College in England. [BE, Concentration: Biomedical, CoE]
BEE 2005
Yuk Yee Yau, BE'05, is a 2005 Merrill Presidential Scholar. She has honored Professor Antje Baeumner as the "Teacher who most influenced her development". [BE, Biomedical, CoE]
BEE 2003
Jain Nieraj, BE'03, is a 2003 Merrill Presidential Scholar. From the Merrill Scholar Convocation Handbook: "Nieraj is an exceptionally outstanding and talented student. His understanding of complex problems is deep and his approach to solving them is very methodical. He has published two papers in the area of biomedical engineering, one in Applied Optics and the other in Optics Letters. His leadership qualities and services include: philanthropy chair and co-founder of Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity where he managed business development, did volunteer service in a hospital, and coordinated a blood drive". He has honored Professor Kifle Gebremedhin as the "teacher who most influenced his development". [BE, Biomedical, CALS]
Yolanda Tseng, BE'03, is a 2003 Merrill Presidential Scholar. From the Merrill Scholar Convocation Handbook: "Yolanda has been named both a Goldwater Scholar and a Churchill Scholar. She is currently doing research with Professor Dan Luo in the general area of nanofabrication and nucleic acid engineering. Yolanda participates in several organizations including the Society of Women Engineers. Her long-term goals are to complete an M.D./Ph.D. program and work as a biomedical engineer in academia or in industry". She has honored Professor Dan Luo as the "teacher who most influenced her development". [BE, Biomedical, CoE]
BEE 2002
Jaimee Reynolds, BE'02, was named the Ivy League Player of the Year after she led the Big Red to a 6-1 record, its best finish in school history. More.
In Their Own Words ...
Meet some of the undergraduate and graduate students who are majoring in BEE.
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Molly Lebowitz '07 Biological Engineering, Environmental Engineering View profile |
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Sarah Phillips '07 Biological Engineering View profile |
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Laura Zheng '08 |
In Their Own Words ...
Meet some of our Alumni:
Student: Yolanda Tseng, BE '03
Major: Biological Engineering with a minor in Biomedical Engineering
Currently in MD program in Health Science and Technology at Harvard Medical School and MIT (joint program with research focus)
Specialization: Radiation Oncology
In High School, I enjoyed math and science, and, more importantly, I liked being able to apply what I learned. Science unfolded before me not only as a representation of nature’s elegant simplicity, but also as a challenge to channel nature’s power into innovative solutions relevant to our lives. Therefore, studying biological engineering seemed a logical next step. ~~ I found Cornell and the BEE program a resource-rich environment. The flexibility of the program suited my several interests. As a sophomore I joined Prof Luo’s lab. It was a pivotal experience, as it opened me to the possibility of pursuing research and academia as a career. More important than the facts I learned in my classes, I was taught how to critically think about problems. I believe this arose form my multi-disciplinary experiences in the class and in the lab. It is something I still use today as a medical student, and something I believe I will continue to use in the future as a physician. The mentorship I received was invaluable and ultimately shaped my current path. I was encouraged to pursue my immediate interests while focusing on the bigger picture. ~~ As I finish my last year of medical school, I am reminded how much I draw from my undergraduate training. My medical training program encourages us to think critically. I think trained engineers with research experience approach medical problems from a different perspective. We learn based on our curiosity of why and how certain things happen.