Why I Want To Pursue A Biomedical Engineering Degree

Academic Statement of Purpose: Biomedical Engineering Ph.D.
I strive to bring meaningful ideas to life. Engineering was a natural choice for me as I entered college, because it allowed me to pursue my desire to discover, design, and build. As a Freshman, I was a student who wanted to learn everything about everything, and so Biomedical Engineering was immediately appealing. This major allowed me to obtain intellectual breadth outside of traditional engineering courses, while still keeping me grounded in my passion to create. Within Biomedical Engineering, I have found my passion in electronics, specifically with respect to neural engineering and device design. I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) on the prestigious
The summer following my Sophomore year, I was given the opportunity to channel my enthusiasm outside of the classroom, when I worked at the Better Future Factory, a small engineering startup in the Netherlands. I worked to design a smart 3D-printed peristaltic pump for a biogas reactor to be installed throughout the city of Rotterdam for a city initiative called BroodNodig. I was more formally exposed to the field of electronics and instrumentation during my Junior year, which culminated in a final project for my Design and Manufacturing II class. Tasked with the objective of designing a novel prosthetic hand prototype, my team and I decided to take a leap into the then unknown world of soft-robotics, where we designed and prototyped a soft-robotic prosthetic hand. Specifically, I designed the hardware and control mechanism for the prosthetic hand, as well as taking lead on the fabrication of the soft actuators for the fingers of our
While my initial goal of working to embed sensors into a soft-prosthetic hand fell through, I was fortunate to be put in a position to work on an entirely different project: designing and integrating a kinesthetic-feedback glove for virtual reality using electroadhesive clutches. An area previously unbeknownst to me, I was able to use my knowledge of electronic design and control to construct a full prototype over the course of three months. I designed the virtual reality environment, employed a Leap-Motion controller for motion-capture, fabricated the clutches based off previous designs by a lab-member, and created a high-voltage circuit for use with an Arduino to control and interface the electroadhesive clutches on the glove with the virtual reality game. Although challenging at times, my work at CMU further solidified my passion for this field, and has helped me to focus on electrical and biomedical research in graduate