Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to learn more about me. Long story short – I’m a PhD candidate in Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Stony Brook University. In anticipation of finishing my degree this year (2022), I am starting the job search process, and to that end I want to use this platform to share a little about myself both professionally and personally.

I’m a non-traditional graduate student, having studied Mechanical rather than Biomedical engineering as an undergraduate, and I returned to academia after working in industry for 4 years after finishing my Bachelor’s degree in 2013. In industry I worked in new product development and product engineering for a centrifugal pump manufacturer, and my short term career goal is to return to industry by earning a position in research and/or product development in the biotechnology or medical device industries. I want to leverage my industry experience in new product development and project management, my academic experience in experimental design and data analysis, and the technical skills I’ve developed along the way into a long-term career bringing innovative products to market that improve human health and well-being.

That’s the long and the short of it, but if you want some more backstory, keep reading!

Through my undergraduate coursework at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY, I developed an academic interest in fluid mechanics. I was fascinated by the Navier-Stokes equations’ descriptions of flow fields, which could explain everyday experiences with fluids in a beautifully exact way. To pursue this interest further in the industry space, I sought a cooperative education (co-op) position on a small product development team at a regional water pump manufacturer, Goulds Water Systems, in Seneca Falls, NY. At Goulds I learned CAD software, performed tests, and diagnosed product issues. Through shadowing senior engineers, I discovered career possibilities in different types of engineering roles. I experienced firsthand how difficult it is to develop a successful product, and greatly admired the ability of the engineers to exploit prior knowledge to quickly solve problems arising throughout the process. This admiration inspired me to pursue a career as an engineering leader myself. My capabilities and potential were recognized; after my first 6 months, I was asked to stay on part-time while I returned to school full-time. I worked at Goulds continuously throughout college, alternating between full-time and part-time while taking classes. I supported myself financially through my co-op employment, and due to my consuming work-class
schedule I chose not to pursue academic research as an undergraduate.

Thus, approaching graduation, I felt better suited to continue my industry career than pursue graduate level research. When my supervisor moved to Goulds’ Industrial Process (IP) division, he called me about an opening in the R&D department there. I seized the opportunity for further skill development and to work with more highly-engineered products. At IP R&D, I performed mechanical design calculations and FEA simulations, coordinated lab testing with technicians, and analyzed data. I represented R&D on multidisciplinary teams, a critical component of successful product development.

After about a year and a half in R&D, I was selected by upper management for a talent development program and rotated for about a year as a Product Engineer. In this role I provided technical support on specific products to all areas of the business, including the machine shop, assembly, quality, and marketing. I fielded a wide range of questions from non-technical staff, which forced me to quickly develop technical communication skills. Upon returning my original R&D role, I worked more independently and managed my own development projects. I designed and oversaw a model-line comprehensive thrust testing program, and even won a company award for my technical writing on product safety. I truly enjoyed R&D work; completing long-term projects and launching a product was a uniquely rewarding experience.

Like many of my generation, I want my career to be in some way positively impactful on human society. Around the time I started my Product Engineering rotation, I experienced a spinal injury that limited my mobility and in turn corroded several other aspects of my life: mental health, hobbies, and relationships. From this experience I fully understood how good health is a critical component of a happy and fulfilled life. I began to consider a career shift to the BME space, as a synergistic combination of my interests in R&D and broader human impact.

To explore this possibility, I enrolled in night courses in Biology, Anatomy and Physiology, and Organic Chemistry at Monroe Community College (MCC) in Rochester, NY. I was immediately drawn to the life sciences, particularly biology. I studied the textbook beyond course requirements to understand the mechanisms of biological processes such as gene expression and cell division. I was fascinated with how the complexity of life could be partially explained through fundamental physical and chemical interactions. In this enthusiasm I was convinced that a career change would ignite my personal drive and passion towards advancing human health through broadly applicable biomedical engineering.

I decided to leave my salaried position to pursue graduate studies in BME. I did so not only to enter a new field, but also to acquaint myself with the academic side of the research enterprise and broaden my experience base for a future return to industrial research and development in the bio-sciences space. I was particularly drawn to applications of fluid mechanics in BME; I wanted to incorporate this interest into graduate level research.

I started in Fall 2017 in the MS program in BME at SBU. Because of my interests in fluids and biology, I joined the Microfluidics for Quantitative and Genomic Biology Lab under Dr. Eric Brouzes. The lab develops microfluidics-based molecular biology techniques to enable single-cell genomics. I leveraged my project management experience to lead my own project, and quickly developed new skills such as Python programming. In academia I discovered that the familiar reward of completing projects was compounded by the generation of new knowledge. I knew that the brevity of an MS program would limit my exposure to the field and future research opportunities. After my first semester, I transferred to SBU’s PhD program in BME to further develop my academic research and analysis skills and to create my own contribution to the field.

For more information about what I’ve spent my time on over the last 4 years, see the Research Interests section above!