students – Page 23 – Penn Bioengineering Blog

May 26, 2018May 25, 2018

APOC Ghana 2018: Day 2

By Sandy Tang, Bioengineering ’19; Eliza Culp, Fine Arts ’20; and Jessica Fan, Biotechnology MS ‘18

This morning, we had a chance to sleep in a bit and recover from our busy travel day. We had a delicious breakfast that consisted of porridge with sugar cubes, sausage, hard boiled eggs, a locally specialized donut made of beans, watermelon, butter bread, and a variety of hot drinks: yum. After our breakfast, a group of us went on a walk around campus, and another group went to a church service at First Love Church.

The church service started with praise worship, followed by numerous student performances. There was a dance group, a drama group, a praise group, and a traditional Twi praise group, and the congregation members were bursting with energy. The pastor then gave her sermon and afterward greeted the congregation. We made a few friends who happened to be students at the university we are staying at: KNUST.

For the other group, we explored KNUST’s expansive campus. We started to wander, and only when we noticed excessive nature did we realize we were no longer on campus. Once back on track, we saw some lizards, baby goats, and plenty of flora and returned to the residential area of campus. We accidentally entered a boy’s dorm but caught a glimpse of what it would be like to be a student at KNUST. Inside the dorm, a pastor was giving a fiery sermon, and many students were hand washing laundry in the courtyard. After leaving the dorms a few of us bought some amazing meat pies, for only 1 Cedi (about a quarter)!

Around 1 p.m., we all got into our bathing suits to head to the pool! The ride was short, and we were excited to have some relief from the heat. We ordered some food before entering the water; there was a choice of jollof or fried rice with either fish or chicken. After ordering our food, we applied sunscreen and dove into the water. There were many other people in the pool already, so we made some friends with the swimmers our age, many of whom were instructors. Shortly after being in the water, Genevieve and Estabelle, two young girls, joined us in the pool, and we played with them and carried them around in the pool. It was such a great time.

We stayed until the pool closed at 6 p.m. and then dried off and took the bus back home. A few of us bought sweet treats from the little shop in our graduate student hostel, Tek Credit. Then, dinner was brought to us by Nana Yaa: a meal of yams, spinach fish stew, rice, fried fish, beef and water melon. We had a brief Twi lesson from Nana Yaa on basic greetings. Our night ended with a quick debrief from Dr. Wattenbarger about our upcoming week.

Excited for the days that lie ahead!

May 25, 2018May 24, 2018

APOC Ghana 2018: Day 1

By Ethan Zhao, Bioengineering ’19 and Sheldon Amoo-Mitchual, Biological Basis of Behavior ‘20

Like last year, a group of Penn Engineering undergrads enrolled in ENGR566 – Appropriate Point of Care Diagnostics, a large number of them Bioengineering majors, have gone to Ghana to get some hand-on experience. They’re blogging their experiences daily.

Today we touched down in Accra bright and early at 8 a.m. We went through immigration and baggage claim without a hitch, and we met up with Nana Ya Awua-Boateng, a PhD student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), who helped us with arrangements as a translator. We loaded up the bus with luggage (both inside and out) and set off for the 5-hour bus ride to Kumasi. Along the way, we slept (a lot), given that we touched down at the equivalent of 4 a.m. EDT. We stopped in the middle for lunch and our first taste of Ghanaian jollof rice and grilled tilapia, which were incredible.

Afterward, we finished our journey to Kumasi and arrived at KNUST, where we unpacked our belongings in the hostel. We also met Salim, a medical student, and Nana Ya’s children, Nana and Genevieve. Soon after, we all took a quick trip down to Big Chinese Restaurant (its literal name) to taste Ghana’s version of Chinese food. We then went back to campus, where we finally went to bed after a long day’s journey.

May 4, 2018July 23, 2018

Classes End With Week of Events

The last week of April is when classes end at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s was an especially busy week for students in Penn’s Department of Bioengineering. In addition to university- and school-wide events, students enjoyed our department picnic and Senior Sendoff.

On Monday and Tuesday, junior Bioengineering students in BE 310 (Bioengineering Modeling, Analysis, & Design Laboratory II) participated in Demo Day, with presentations of groups’ solutions to a problem posed in the class to crate a spectrophotometer. The students’ creativity was on full display, with designs based on the McDonalds logo, Star Wars, and Hogwarts (see below).

Wednesday was the Bioengineering Spring Picnic. Although the event had to be moved inside due to rain, students, faculty, and staff were able to enjoy a catered lunch. Thursday was Hey Day (April 26), the day on which Penn juniors across the university “officially” become seniors.

Finally, on Friday, the school-wide Senior Design competition was held among the teams who won the previous week’s department-wide competition. One of our Bioengineering teams (see above) won second honorable mention. Congratulations to them and all of the winners!

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018

Jina Ko Named Schmidt Scholar

Jina Ko, a PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, was among the 14 PhD candidates from the U.S., Canada, and Germany to be named to the inaugural class of Schmidt Science Fellows. The announcement was made on April 23 at the Apella Alexandria Center for Life Science in New York. Jina will receive a $100,000 to cover living expenses while working as a postdoctoral fellow under the auspices of the Rhodes Trust, which also administers the Rhodes Scholarships for student-athletes. The placement is preceded by a five-week orientation at the University of Oxford beginning this July.

An alumna of Rice University in Houston, Jina came to Penn in 2013 and has worked in the lab of Professor David Issadore, working on microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip technologies. “Jina is the ideal person for the Schmidt Fellowship,” Dr. Issadore said, “and I am very pleased that Eric and Wendy Schmidt agreed! Her work in my lab has brought together microfluidics with machine learning to develop diagnostics for diseases that do not have conventional biomarkers. By working with collaborators at Abramson Cancer Center and Presbyterian hospital, Jina demonstrated an ability to accurately diagnose pancreatic cancer at its earliest stages and prognose specific states of traumatic brain injury, both of which were not possible with previous technology. This fellowship will allow Jina to take a much deeper dive into machine learning and its application to next generation medical diagnostics during her post-doc, and I can’t wait to see what she develops.”

April 25, 2018April 24, 2018

More Awards for Penn Bioengineering Students

Every year the Penn Bioengineering Department presents several awards to students. Last week, we featured our NSF scholarship winners and Rothberg Catalyzer first-prize winners. Here, we present more awards given to students for their service, originality, leadership, and scholarship.

More Awards The Albert Giandomenico Award, presented to four students who “reflect several traits that include teamwork, leadership, creativity, and knowledge applied to discovery-based learning in the laboratory,” was given to Jessica Rose, Michael Roth, Singh Gurjeet, Nicholas Vigilante. The Herman P. Schwan Award, named for a former faculty member in Bioengineering, was given to Anna Branch. In addition, Nicholas Stiansen received the Bioengineering Student Leadership Award and four students —Shira Rieke, Karol Szymula, Kate Panzer, and Michael Patterson — won the Penn Engineering Exceptional Service Award.

The Wolf-Hallac Award was established in October 2000 to be awarded to the best graduating female senior from Penn Engineering who is seen as a role model, has achieved a high GPA (top 10%) of class and who has demonstrated a commitment to school and or community. This year’s award was given to two stands: Jacqueline Valeri from Bioengineering and Anna Estep from Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. The Ben and Bertha Gomberg Kirsch Award, given by the Undergraduate Affairs Committee for achievement in applied science, went to BE’s Harvey Huang.

Last but certainly not least are our senior design and project award winners. This year’s Biomedical Applied Science Project Award was given to Bioengineering major Emily Bachner. The department’s Senior Design competition was held on April 16 and 18, and three teams were selected to continue to the school-wide competition this Friday. The three teams had the following members:

• Kate Panzer, Jackie Valeri, Nick Stiansen, and Karol Szymula
• Eric Helfgott, Margaret Schroeder, Manjari Ganti, and Kyle O’Neil
• Jessica Rose, Michael Roth, Gurjeet Singh, and Nick Vigilante

Congratulations to all of our winners!

April 12, 2018

Awards Season for Bioengineering Students

It’s awards season again, and Penn Bioengineering undergraduates and graduate students are among the honorees. Five students received fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Three of our current graduate students — Jason Andrechak, Brendan Murphy, and Wisberty Gordián Vélez — were awarded fellowships. In addition, two of our former undergrads — Elaida Dimwamwa and Ingrid Sheu Lan — won fellowships to attend graduate programs, respectively, at Georgia Tech and Stanford.

Among our Master’s students, Natalie A. Giovino was one of four recipients from the School of Engineering and Applies Science receiving Outstanding Academic Awards. BE undergraduate Jacqueline A. Valeri, who will go on to MIT for her PhD next year, received honorable mention. Finally, at the Rothberg Catalyzer at Penn over the last weekend in March, the first prize (runner-up to grand prize) award of $2,000 went to a team of Penn freshmen including Bioengineering major Jonathan Mairena.

“The successes of our remarkable students continue to be recognized in local and national competitions” says David Meaney, S.R. Pollack Professor and chair of Bioengineering, “and is more evidence of the special environment Penn has for bioengineering.”

Congratulations to all our winners!

March 23, 2018March 22, 2018

Sam DeLuccia: Voices of Penn Engineering Master’s Alumni

Growing up and living in rural, upstate New York, there are a lot of things that stay off of your radar. I was always interested in science, technology, and medicine, but had very little exposure to the world of engineering until about four years ago.

As a competitive tennis player, my drive to be a college athlete steered much of my college search. Additionally, I knew that I wanted to go to a small school and to make an impact on the community, leading me to seek out liberal arts schools. I was recruited to Hobart and William Smith Colleges (HWS) in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and was excited to jump into the scientific community there. Though it was strong in traditional sciences, HWS did not have an engineering program. I majored in biology and was a pre-med student until I realized it was not for me. Trying my hand in molecular genetics research didn’t seem to click either, so I took a step away from science.

I loved being part of such an intimate community at HWS and wanted to give back to the school, so after I graduated I worked full-time for the admissions department and assistant-coached for men’s tennis for two years. I knew this was only temporary; I missed working in STEM!

After months of exploration, I discovered bioengineering — the perfect combination of biology, medicine, and technology. I was ready for the career switch and excited at the possibility. After applying to several schools with limited familiarity of what I was up against, University of Pennsylvania accepted me into the master’s program and I could not turn down the opportunity. Additionally, my brother was accepted into the Robotics Master’s program at the same time! As one can imagine, this was particularly exciting for my parents, as their years of love and support resulted in two of their children attending excellent programs together.

Continue reading at Penn Engineering’s Medium blog.

March 9, 2018March 8, 2018

Thouron Award for Bioengineering Major Nicholas Stiansen

Nicholas Stiansen, a senior Bioengineering major at Penn, is one of eight students and alumni receiving a Thouron Award. Nick will receive a full scholarship to cover tuition and fees, plus a stipend of £19,500 (approximately $27,000). He is still awaiting decisions from graduate programs, but his first choice is to study at Imperial College London (ICL) in the United Kingdom.

Named for Sir John Thouron, a British aristocrat and husband of Esther Driver du Pont, great-granddaughter of Alfred V. du Pont, founder of the chemical company, the Thouron Award is given to graduates of Penn and of universities in the U.K. Each year, a small number of Penn students receives awards, as well as a similar number of British students. Previous awardees include: the current nominee to head the SEC, Jay Clayton; Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Jennifer Egan; and John J. Leonard, Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering and Samuel C. Collins Professor at MIT.

In addition to majoring in Bioengineering, Nick works as an undergraduate research assistant in the Spine Pain Research Laboratory of Beth Winkelstein, Vice Provost for Education and Professor, and a teaching assistant for BE 310, the second half of the junior year bioengineering lab series. Plus, he holds or has held positions with the Engineering Deans’ Advisory Board and the Biomedical Engineering Society, and he is involved in the Theta Tau Professional Engineering Fraternity and Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. If he enrolls at ICL, Nick intends to study in the university’s Master’s program in Medical Device Design and Entrepreneurship.

“I am honored to be named a Thouron Scholar,” Nick says, “and I am extremely excited to continue my graduate studies in the U.K. I am eager to immerse myself in a new, vibrant culture and learn about medical technology from an entirely new perspective. This experience will be integral towards achieving my long-term goal of developing the next wave of innovative and accessible medical devices.”

January 11, 2018

Second Roundtable With Undergrads

Late last semester, Penn Bioengineering Department chair David Meaney and senior lecturer LeAnn Dourte held a second roundtable with BE undergrads Eric Helfgott, Joseph Maggiore, Kayla Prezelski, and Margaret Schroeder. They picked up on topics from the last roundtable, extending the topics to balancing an engineering workload and other commitments.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

November 13, 2017December 12, 2017

Roundtable With Undergraduate BE Majors

Last week, for our latest podcast, Penn Bioengineering Department Communications Coordinator Andrew Mathis sat down with a roundtable of five undergraduate students — Lamis Elsawah, Eric Helfgott, Joseph Maggiore, Kayla Prezelski, and Margaret Schroeder — to talk about how they chose Penn, what majoring in BE has been like so far, and other things.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download