Major: biomedical engineering
Hometown: Berkeley Heights, NJ

Why you choose Cornell Engineering?
I loved the breadth and depth of Cornell Engineering and how it would enable me to explore so many of my areas of interest both in class and through project teams and research.

What is your favorite thing about Cornell Engineering?
Students’ drive to accomplish great things.

What do you do outside of the classroom?
I am involved with two project teams (Concrete Canoe and Engineers without Borders), research, the Society for Women Engineers, and I am a member of Greek life.

Major: biomedical engineering
Hometown: Austin, TX

Why did you choose Cornell?
I chose Cornell mainly for the school’s academic diversity. I was interested in engineering but unsure whether to pursue that completely or explore other areas. Biomedical engineering in particular offered me the chance to explore a broader range of areas. I was also attracted to Cornell because of its vast offering of athletic clubs, interest groups and the diversity of the student population. Finally, after visiting many other campuses, I just felt most at home at Cornell.

How did you decide on your BME concentration? 
I chose to pursue Molecular/Cellular/Systems Engineering (MCSE) because it seemed like the most applicable concentration—my interests have always surrounded small-scale interactions in the body rather than instrumentation or drug delivery.

Any interests outside of or in relationship to your scholarship?
I completed an internship last summer at Gartner, Inc. in Washington, DC and I will be joining that company full-time upon graduation. For 2 1/2 years, I worked in Dr. Fischbach’s lab doing research on the breast cancer microenvironment and how it impacts morphology and metastasis. I am one of the captains of the Cornell A women’s ultimate frisbee team, the Wild Roses, and have been an important part of the team for four years. When I am not running practice or planning tournaments, I am cooking or baking.

What stands out to you about your Cornell BME experience so far and why?
My favorite class has been Dr. Cosgrove’s class, BME 3110: Cellular Systems Biology. It combined my interest in cellular systems with computing-based data analysis and helped me to direct my next steps post-graduation. I also really enjoyed Dr. Yu’s class on Biomedical Data Science this past fall.

Major: biomedical engineering
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA

Why did you choose Cornell Engineering?
I chose Cornell Engineering because of the many opportunities to apply what I’ve learned outside of the classroom to real-world solutions in a positive community. I love that I get to apply skills from the classroom to real world scenarios in the form of project teams and research alongside supportive staff and peers!

What is your favorite thing about Cornell Engineering?
My favorite part about Cornell Engineering is the ability to immerse myself into subjects that may not directly be from the department of my major. I can truly take classes on subjects that I am curious about and have it count towards my degree requirements. Last semester I took a song-writing course!

What do you do outside of the classroom?
I am on the project team Engineering World Health, where I help to come up with electrical engineering solutions to global health issues alongside companies. I am also active in research on medical techniques and devices! I am also a supporter of educational equity, so I help plan related events and awareness based on campus with the support of program housing and the school’s public service center.

Major: biomedical engineering
Hometown: Woodbury, MN

Why did you choose Cornell Engineering?
The schools that I narrowed my decision down to were Washington University in St. Louis, Johns Hopkins, and Cornell. I visited all of them and found that I didn’t much care for Baltimore or St. Louis. Additionally, the fact that the biomedical (BME) program was so new at Cornell was actually a selling point for me. It meant that we would probably be worked a lot harder than at peer institutions as Cornell tried to prove that their BME students were just as good or better than those at peer institutions. The youth of the program also meant that we would have the opportunity to help shape the program. It didn’t hurt that Cornell’s campus was the most beautiful of every school I visited.

What advice might you give other students considering BME?
Never, ever be afraid to ask for help. There are so many resources in place at Cornell to help you succeed and there is no shame in getting help to be successful. It’s something I’ve always struggled with because asking for help means showing vulnerability and admitting that you don’t understand something. But I’ve come to learn over four years that no one knows everything and while it may seem that some of your peers know far more than you, I guarantee you have knowledge that they don’t. If everyone is willing to ask for help, then everyone’s knowledge increases.

What stands out to you about your Cornell BME experience so far and why?
Professor Cosgrove’s class is probably the best class I’ve taken in the BME curriculum. He’s such a great guy and truly cares about the success of all of his students. I also had a pretty weak background in coding and his class improved my ability to write code for simulations and troubleshoot. Additionally, I’ve seen some of these signaling cascades in other biology classes before, but it is so hard to imagine what is happening with all of these feedback loops. I thought it was so cool that we learned how to simulate these cascades so that by changing some initial concentrations upstream we can see how the entire cascade responds and even look at the time dependent behavior of individual components.

What’s the next step for you and who or what has led you in this direction?
Starting this summer I will be working in New York City at the Tisch Multiple Sclerosis Research Institute for a period of two years as I round out my application before applying to medical school. I am taking this path because I want to spend more time doing research to decide if I want to be an MD or an MD/PhD. It also gives me an opportunity to spend more time volunteering and shadowing before entering medical school.

Major: biomedical engineering
Hometown: Wayland, MA

Why did you choose Cornell Engineering?
I chose Cornell because of the opportunities that are available to undergraduate students. I knew I wanted to study engineering in college. Cornell offered strong majors in every field of engineering and has a diverse array of research, organizations, and clubs available for students to pursue. I also loved that Cornell has so many different colleges with so many classes outside of engineering to choose from.

What advice might you give other students considering BME?
I think the first thing I would say is to get involved! There are so many labs, clubs and project teams on campus. Find a bunch of professors who do research on something that interests you, seek them out, and talk to them—they’re happy to share what they know and might offer you a change to work with them. For those considering BME I would say that at its foundation, biomedical engineering is about helping others. If that is what you like, then this is a perfect major for finding creative solutions to difficult health problems.

What do you do outside of the classroom?
Throughout college I’ve been fortunate to be a part of an engineering project team and to participate in undergraduate research. For three years I was part of Cornell’s Baja Racing project team as a business team member. Later on, as I shifted my focus to research, I have also been a part of the work going on in two labs (Dr. Wang and Dr. Putnam) where I have researched biomaterials and novel drug delivery systems. Outside of Cornell, I have had two summer internships, one in research and development at Moderna and the other in process development at Biogen.

What’s the next step for you?
Although I am graduating in May, I am enrolled in the Master of Engineering early-admit program at Cornell, which is designed to allow seniors in engineering to begin graduate studies early and graduate with a Masters Degree with only one additional semester of school. I chose to do an M. Eng in BME in order to continue research and sharpen my lab techniques. Afterwards I plan on working in Pharmaceutical R&D or process development in the Boston area.

Major: biomedical engineering
Hometown: West Bloomfield, MI

Why you choose Cornell Engineering?
My dad was a Cornell engineer who put Cornell on my radar very early, and told such great stories of his time here that I had to check it out! The more I looked into Cornell Engineering, the more convinced I became that it was right for me with all of its incredible educational, extracurricular, and groundbreaking researching opportunities.

What is your favorite thing about Cornell Engineering?
I love the community of dedicated, helpful, and hard-working people I have met in Cornell Engineering. It would be difficult to find a more devoted and talented group!

What do you do outside of the classroom?
I am involved very extensively in extracurriculars. I am an Engineering Ambassador, I perform research in the Fischbach Lab, I am president of Engineers for a Sustainable World project team, a Leadership Assistant with a local hospital volunteering organization, and on the board for Tau Beta Pi (the national Engineering Honor Society). I also work as a tutor for freshman and sophomore engineering classes, and love dancing on Rise Dance Group!