Last few weeks at Marcus Engineering and Project Update

My last few weeks as a full time intern at Marcus Engineering were a blast. While everyone was pretty high-strung because the sputtering deposition project for SCI was getting behind schedule, it was still a pleasure to be there. Everyone has been so kind and generous to me throughout this process and I am sad that it is over.

Though the full time work is done, my personal project is still in full swing.

Recently, I have connected with a number of people who have given me great advice for my work. One person I spoke to was James Niemi from the WYSS Institute at Harvard. He is a biomedical engineer who led a team of researchers in designing a vibrating insoles for shoes that have shown to be effective in helping promote balance in the elderly and in patients with peripheral neuropathy. This is a bit different than what I am interested in working on—something more focused on pain relief—but it is a very similar project. He was very generous and took time out of his busy day to give me a phone call. He talked to me about the research an design process for engineering biomedical technologies. He also told me about his team's device and the research that went into building and testing the device. He went over some of the challenges with building a prototype costs, timeframes, testing etc.), and sent me a number of very relevant papers for my project. Beyond that, he kindly answered many of my questions about the field of biomedical engineering at large (what opportunities his degree has afforded him, what the culture of the field is like, what he wished he would have known before entering the field etc.). Talking to him opened my eyes to the challenge of the project I have picked for myself but also made me extremely excited about it. He is such an inspiration to me and I find his work fascinating. I look forward to continuing our correspondence.

Last Friday I also got the opportunity to attend one of the weekly SALSA meetings at UMC. While Dr. Armstrong, Bijan and Manish were not there, I did get the opportunity to hear about the exciting research in biomedical engineering coming out of the U of A. I listened to project overviews from two different undergrads doing research at the UMC. One of them discussed their project on assessing frailty with objective measures especially for people who cannot walk. Another student discussed an innovative new exercise plan that utilizes virtual reality technology to help people with arthritis maintain their ability to walk and reduce their joint pain. I will be back there soon for another meeting and am also trying to schedule a time to sit in on a surgery (preferably a diabetic foot ulcer treatment) at UMC for more exposure to the field. While my fresh human dissection experience two years ago at the Laboratories of Anatomical Enlightenment showed me that I have a strong stomach in terms of dealing with the human body/medical procedures, participating in a real surgery carries a whole different slue of challenges (especially because foot ulcers are pretty gnarly to look at—the picture below is an illustration because the real life pictures seemed a little intense for this context).

I have also talked with a biomedical engineering student at the University of Arizona who did work on developing a vibrating insole for her own college senior project. She gave me a lot of advice and insight into the field and provided me with many resources for the project. 

The general outline for what I have to do now includes: 

Writing up a surgery to determine the desires/wants of the market. I am hoping to distribute these at El Rio, as well as at UMC and the VA. After I get feed back about what features matter to the intended market, I will write up a design plan for the project with a list of the features it must have. Based on this, I can develop a materials list and construction plan and begin working on a prototype. 
Optimally, by January I will have a basic prototype done and spend the next few months developing it more and interning with the Pascua Yaqui diabetes program to get the public health side of diabetes prevention.