Personal Motivation
We use tools every day that help us accelerate processes, enhance skills, extend lives, and take us to new places in a faster and safer way than ever before. From developing low- to zero-emission vehicles to quantum computing to nerve-driven prosthetics, engineers drive the progress that affords people healthier, more comfortable lives. This is what makes the profession so interesting to me, especially in musculoskeletal biomechanics where people are gaining or regaining the use of their limbs, affording them a more comfortable and healthy life.

My initial interest in biomechanics began when my sister broke her wrist. She had been playing soccer and, like so many others, fell backwards on an outstretched arm. I began to wonder if there was a way to teach people, particularly athletes, how to fall in a way that would minimize the impact and put their bones at less of a risk. Wanting to understand how fractures occur and what makes some people more susceptible to breaks than others, I enrolled in my high school’s Honors Research in Science program where I worked with Dr. Tishya Wren in the Gait Lab at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. I researched the relationships of bone, muscle, and fat in children with Cerebral Palsy and what makes children with CP more susceptible to fractures than healthy children. This experience gave me the knowhow to describe complex ideas in an accessible way for the general public.

Undergraduate Experience
I enrolled at Carleton College to combine the liberal arts opportunity to broaden my horizon across a breadth of subjects while building a strong foundation in science and math. This experience armed me with a critical understanding of the properties that go into engineering and physical design as well as the ability to connect those fundamentals with other fields. With theoretical courses such as Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics & Statistical Mechanics, I developed a strong quantitative background necessary to derive complex equations and solve intricate problems, learning to seek the answer not only of “how” but also “why.” In such classes as Classical Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism, I learned the fundamental principles that drive the tools used in bone failure diagnosis and treatment. Through the practical labs of Contemporary Experimental Physics I filled my toolset with the problem solving and creative thinking approach I need to be successful in engineering.

Understanding the properties of an experiment or the laws behind a theory is not enough to make advancements that society as a whole can understand and utilize. My liberal arts education encouraged me to take classes in a variety of subjects and helped me connect the topics to each other and to the world around me. The diversity of interests and expertise amongst the students ensured that there were never hard lines between subjects and taught me the values of approaching new problems wit a unique perspective.

My sophomore year I tutored students in our introductory physics classes for our F.O.C.U.S. program. These students had an interest in the sciences and were given a community to utilize for mentorship and camaraderie. I also gained from this experience as a mentor by improving my ability to communicate scientific concepts.

My senior comprehensive exercise at Carleton was an integrative exploration of the physics of bones. The work compiled research from other physicists, engineers, surgeons, etc. to culminate in an explanation of how bones fracture, are imaged, and heal. While pulling from more broad studies and explaining all types of fracture situations and many different healing techniques, I followed one woman’s process from the point at which she fractured her tibia to when she regained her full-range of exercise. Through my research experience senior year in high school and my thesis at Carleton, I have built a curiosity and interest in finding fracture prevention solutions and healing options.

Exploration of Engineering Applications
While I was at Carleton, I spent my summers sharing my interest in science with children through a summer school run at my high school. I was a teaching assistant for a variety of classes including “Fun with Chemistry,” “Young Doctors,” and a computer coding class called “Scratch Animation.” Scientific opportunities are not common in elementary school and high school science tends to be geared more and more towards lectures and memorization rather than labs and discovery. Due to this lack of hands-on experiences, students begin to doubt their scientific ability and lose interest in the area. I chose to teach these interactive classes to keep students engaged in science.

Throughout my four years at Carleton I worked in the College’s Theater Department doing technical work. My experience in the theater allowed me to explore aspects of engineering such as lighting design and set construction. Delving into both a structural and mechanical side in set design and construction as well as an optical side learning the physics of lighting design, I got exposure to multiple areas. At the same time, being a part of a production such as a play taught me how to collaborate to solve problems. All aspects of the theater, from the set and lights to the plot and actors, have to work together to put on a flawless production. This is similar to how bone biomechanics has to work together with radiology, fracture setting braces, and stimulation to optimize fracture healing.

I spent my final year at Carleton also working in the instrument shop in the Physics Department. I learned how to use a variety of machines from lathes and mills to 3D printers, as well as how to create designs in Autodesk Inventor. More importantly, though, the shop reminded me how rewarding the design and creation of material products that stem from a problem or an idea can be. One of my projects was to create the guidelines for use of our new CNC mill. I learned how to write the code required to drive the machine and created a set of guidelines for writing code and understanding how bit size and material affect rotation speed, cutting speed, and cutting depth to ensure the optimal results without breaking bits. I had to run a variety of trials to understand how to improve administration of the cutting fluid and how many layers should be used to complete a cut. By the end my supervisor and I had created a complete plan for students interested in using the CNC mill in the future.

Being able to design and create in this way, both materially and procedurally, affirmed my desire to pursue a career in innovation. Working with the 3D printer, I learned about how modified versions of these machines can be used to print organic materials from tissues to organs. I took a particular interest in 3D printed casts that were created with openings for attachment of electric stimulation nodes. This interest illustrated to me that I wanted to work to come back to bone fractures, whether from the decreased susceptibility and prevention end or on the accelerated and strengthened healing end.

In my first months at Stony Brook University I have begun to broaden my understanding of biomechanics beyond the mostly physical aspects I had gathered during my comprehensive exercises at Carleton. I work in Dr. Clinton Rubin’s lab where we analyze the effect of low-intensity vibration on bone. My current project involves having patients stand on vibrating plates to assess the effectiveness of low-intensity vibration as a non-drug, non-invasive pain mitigation treatment in patients with spinal stenosis.

As a graduate student I work as a teaching assistant for one of the undergraduate biomedical engineering classes. This class has proved especially difficult because the expectations of the professor are not always clear to the students or the TAs. Nonetheless this is another opportunity for me to reach out to students and keep them interested in STEM. I am working with students to unravel the lectures and homework and connect them to what we teach in lab. I encourage them to think about biomedical engineering in a new prospective. While the class may be challenging to understand, I am able to build their confidence and understanding and keep them from losing interest in science.

Career Exploration Beyond Science
As my time at Carleton was coming to an end I realized that I had a broad interest in engineering but was not ready to jump directly into graduate school. I became a portfolio risk analyst at Wells Capital Management where I assessed the risks in the investments of the portfolios managed by our firm. Portfolio risk was an area in which I would be able to apply my quantitative background while also exploring a new career option. While finance was not as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be, I learned the ins and outs of how a company makes itself appear worthy of investment and how to navigate some of the business aspects that will surely arise working in engineering.

During my time in finance I still wanted to give back to my community, particularly children. I was able to find two ways to get involved, tutoring at SEA Literacy and coaching at Milwaukee Kickers Soccer Club. Southeast Asian (SEA) Literacy is an organization that sets out to help refugees from Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar, with “academic tutoring and cultural mentorship.” The families of the students that come these sessions had to flee persecution of the Karen and Rohingya in their homeland of Myanmar. The children are bright and courageous in pursuing a sense of normalcy in the United States and it is inspiring to watch them grow and learn. I taught a wide range of ages and everything from reading English to cell biology.

In addition to teaching, I also coached girls’ soccer. My team was five- to six-year-olds and had little to no experience. Young girls face discrimination in areas such as athletics and sciences from a very young age and it is important to start instilling confidence to ensure they can pursue any dream they want no matter what others say. We had some girls who had extraordinary natural ability but the amount of pressure they received from their parents made them feel that they would be better off not trying at all than trying and failing. It was my goal to teach these girls the fundamentals of soccer while also helping them see that, no matter how the first attempt goes, there is no reason to stop trying.