Why Biomedical Engineering Is a Mindset, Not Just a Career

Clare: Hello everyone and welcome back. Today's episode we are going to be going over biomedical engineering. often referred to as BME. As you may know, I am one of the academic advisors for the biomedical engineering program, so I know a lot about this major naturally. So let's just dive into some introductory things you might want to know about the major. For your foundational courses in biomedical engineering, you can expect to take similar courses to other engineering majors like Calculus 1, all the way through linear algebra and differential equations, physics and computing. But where BME differs for some is that you will also need to take biology and slightly more chemistry. The BME major is a little unique in the fact that we have both a standard or industry track and a pre-med track that students can pursue. The pre-med track fits in both engineering courses and courses that are needed for most medical schools, like organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, et cetera. Most students that want to go to medical school have to fit in all their degree requirements and their medical school prereqs, but BME provides a streamlined curriculum where you can get both an engineering background and degree and get most of your med school prereqs done on time. The biggest difference between our two tracks is that our standard or industry track covers all the necessary engineering courses and gives you additional technical electives to explore specializations within the degree, which we'll get to later. Whereas the pre-med track doesn't give you as many technical electives and instead replaces them with some of those medical school prerequisites. I would like to emphasize that with the pre-med track, you do still get a biomedical engineering degree. you just take a slightly different path to getting there. Speaking of specializations, the biomedical engineering degree has many opportunities for you to specialize in particular areas. In fact, it's highly encouraged. BME is a very interdisciplinary degree. So students will take classes in other departments like mechanical, electrical, chemical, so on so forth. So you may find an interest in exploring the overlap between, for example, mechanical and biomedical. And we encourage you and give you space to do so. Many of the areas we see students specialize in and areas of research include, but are not limited to biomechanics, bioinstrumentation, biotherapeutics, and more. You may be interested in some of these areas if you're curious about things like human motion, prosthetics, orthopedics, medical devices like biosensors or imaging systems, or robotic surgical tools and this is just to name a few of those focus areas. Overall, the career paths that most VME students will pursue are either going into the medical field, going into research, or working specifically at engineering companies. To put it simply, BME can be an anomaly and oftentimes students don't know what you can do with a BME degree if you don't go to med school. You get all the necessary engineering foundations, but you also get a specialized training with relation to how engineering connects with medicine and the human body. so where exactly does that put you when you're ready to graduate and look for jobs? well, to answer these questions and more, I am joined by three professors within the BME program to give us their perspective on the field and how it unique. Uniquely prepare students to excel in the workforce and beyond. Please welcome Dr. Corey New, Dr. Jessica McLaughlin, and Dr. James Long. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate you taking the time and letting us get to know a little bit more about BME. So first and foremost, if you all just want to go around and say briefly kind of how you got into this discipline, what made you want to teach and mentor in this field. so I'm Jessica McLoughlin. I am an associate teaching professor for BME and I've been at CU for this is my seventh year now. I actually didn't make the switch to biomedical until my PhD I started in engineering physics actually undergraduate and knew that I really liked physics and kind of took other general engineering courses. But then when I was looking at graduate school options and the research that was available, I really wanted to do something that was a lot more applicable to everyday life and would hopefully help benefit quality of life. so it kind of the humanitarian side of things. With physics, it's such an old science that a lot of what they're doing now except for maybe applied physics is really far removed from that. so I really wanted to get into the medical side of engineering. so yeah so that's kind of what made me want to be in this field and then teaching specifically when I was doing my PhD I Had an opportunity to teach a lab section for anatomy and physiology. It was being the instructor for a lab and being able to actually teach students and interact with students. And I found that way more fulfilling for me personally than doing the research itself. And I also love learning about all things. So it was really hard to kind of like hone in on one area of research that I wanted to focus on and with teaching I get to do a variety of different fields. I'm Corey New and I started off as an engineering undergraduate in mechanical engineering and it was really when I got involved with research as an undergraduate, in the medical sciences that I was able to bring together engineering and medicine together and in the BME discipline. So when I was a master student and PhD student, then I made the switch to BME and never looked back. I've always had interest in medicine and and engineering. It's a perfect blend. When I was a PhD student, I still thought I would go And work in industry, but when I was a postdoc, I started to really fall in love with research and I really like being in the academic environment. So I decided to to turn it into a career. So that's why I'm here. Hi, I'm James Long. I'm an assistant teaching professor in BME. not that it's a competition, but I think I've been team BME my whole academic career. I got my undergraduate degree in bioengineering and then my master's and PhD in biomedical engineering. I think the thing that drew me most to BME is how interdisciplinary it is. I think it's a really cool field where you can do a lot of things and another cool thing. So you can do, math and biology, you can do mechanics and electronics, you can do instrumentation and material science. And I think that interdisciplinary side of BME, applying that to solving some really complex and emerging problems in healthcare just was always something that drew me in. And the thing I think that really got me into teaching was I took a class with Ann Satterbach who co-wrote the textbook for Dr. Franklin's Principles and Methods class. And she was at Rice when I was at Rice as an undergrad, and then we both went to Duke when I started grad school. And I ended up TA' her three times, and she really had a really heavy hand in mentoring my teaching style and kind of pushing me towards a career in teaching. And I think she's an amazing role model, and she really showed me the impact you can make. And how you can kind of teach these really complex subjects in a way that really gets students to see, what can you really accomplish with a degree in BME? So I think that really inspired me to eventually, pursue a career in teaching in academia. Well, thank you all for sharing. Glad to have you here. so how would you describe this major to someone who knows nothing about it? I would just say engineering applied to, you know, medicine. medical problems, but I think you captured a second ago. Do you want to sort of restate that? Sure. I guess to someone who doesn't really know anything about biomedical engineering, it's kind of taking a bunch of different sets of knowledge and combining it to apply it and solve a medical problem. I think it's a really unique major because you're drawing from so many different pools of knowledge and you have to learn how to access those pools of knowledge. but if you're someone who just likes to do a bunch of different things, BME is a pretty good major for you. But I would say the misconception though is BME as a jack of all trades, I think is incorrect. You know, I think that people can go quite deep in the field and we typically here at CU Boulder and a lot of places, train people so they have deep expertise in some kind of subject like mechanical engineering, chemical engineering. Electrical engineering applied to medicine, so that you can sort of stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the traditional engineering disciplines, but also speak the language of medicine, speak the language of biology. so I think that makes our students particularly strong and valuable. what and maybe I'll combine one of my other questions, what makes this major exciting right now? What makes it meaningful to you? I think the really exciting thing is because it's still relatively a new field, there's a lot that we're still learning to do and how technology is advancing so quickly to be able to do medical procedures and develop therapeutics and instrumentation that were only a dream, you know, five, ten years ago. So I think there's so much left untapped, especially because of the interdisciplinary nature of the program and of the major. you know, you can specialize in one kind of area and then be able to repurpose or revamp current technology for a different application. And there's still so much that we don't know about pathology and biology and Depending on what you're interested in, there's still a lot to be discovered, which I think is really exciting. to my point, I was talking about physics being a very old science. There's not as much that is directly relevant to our lives today, compared to the biomedical field. So I think that's really cool. Yeah, I think building off of that, I think one interesting aspect to biomedical engineering is that you can always feel in touch with the people who benefit from biomedical technologies. I see this a lot in the class that I teach Capstone Design, where a lot of the students they have the ability to talk to the people who end up using their device, whether it's an end user. So if they're designing some kind of prosthetic attachment. they can actually talk to a para athlete or if they're designing a new surgical tool, they can actually talk to a surgeon and they really can see the impact that these new technologies can make on the standard of healthcare. So really having that close connection to the people who benefit from all this technology, all this hard work, is a really special part of biomedical engineering. I also want to add that there are a lot of translational studies that are really exciting. You know, people who are students and professors, research associates who are developing new ideas, they're getting them, translated into products, they're starting companies. We see a lot of that in Boulder. and I think if you have a good idea, if you have the ambition, this is a great place to be and this is a great field to be in. there's so much new and exciting information and technologies that are becoming available all the time. Yeah, I think a lot of the times when I ask students why did you choose Biomed, they say they want to help people. Obviously you can help people in all different kinds of engineering majors, but to your point, James, it's one of the majors where you see directly how you are impacting people's lives and you see it with your own eyes, I do want to get into this question because it's something I talk about all the time with my students. The difference between biomed, mechanical, chemical, why would you choose to do a biomed degree over a mechanical or a chemical degree? not necessarily that one is better than the other, but what kinds of scenarios would someone want to have? And it would benefit them to have a BME degree. That's a great question. A lot of students I know struggle with that. And we even see in our faculty, right, that we have a lot of our faculty span different disciplines. Like I'm technically, tenure housed in mechanical engineering, but I spend most of my time in biomed. So why would I choose in my case, mechanical versus biomedical? I think I would choose mechanical if I only wanted to, focus on mechanical problems like it could be a gear that's on a spaceship or a gear that's in a medical device and it's like I'm focused on the gear. But if I want to see it more specifically, play out in medical science and help people, then I find myself gravitating more toward biomedical engineering. In a lot of ways you can get to the same end goal, But I think if I want to spend most of my time thinking about the relevant physiology, anatomy concepts and the instrumentation required, the bio instrumentation required, a lot of these specific things, align me more with biomedical in that case. to build off of that too, I view BME and a biomedical engineer as kind of a bridge between a lot of different disciplines and workspaces and specialties. So to Corey's point where you can communicate with clinicians, but you can also communicate with electrical engineers and mechanical engineers and chemical engineers I think it's a big adjustment to have to learn to adapt to teaching and learning styles in each of these disciplines. But if that is a skill that it is really meaningful to you to be able to communicate in these different spaces and kind of draw everybody together to work on this project, I think that's a really good reason to be in BME I also kind of view, if we're talking about kind of a bridge between them, it's kind of the glue on the team, right? to Corey's point where if a mechanical engineer is working on a gear within a medical device, the need for that mechanical engineer is a gear. Whereas when you're the biomedical engineer, the need is a device that can do a certain thing in healthcare or a therapy. it's kind of the broader need and then how do you help facilitate the specialties on that team to get the device working together. Yeah. So like if someone's designing the gear, you have kind of that same basic knowledge as them of okay, what goes into designing this gear, but you also have the knowledge of, okay, how is this going to interact with the human body? Is this going to actually work for what we want it to do? Yeah. Is the material you're using, is that going to break down in a body environment so you have kind of that background knowledge of how all of the working parts interact with the physiology part of it. Yeah, in my experience that's part of the challenge though that we have in biomedical engineering because we want the students to have the same kind of expertise as the mechanical or any other traditional engineering discipline, but then additionally be able to talk and make that bridge that you're talking about. I think it comes down to what's your training? in this degree, you learn how to speak a bunch of different languages. I think it's interesting when I see my students work on their capstone design projects, they are able to anticipate issues just because they're seeing so many domains in classes leading up to this. So they are thinking about things like biocompatibility. They're thinking about I have this mechanical implement, how's it going to affect the electrical implement that's also on this device? So speaking those different languages really kind of sets them apart in how they would operate on a multidisciplinary team, I mean I it's just exciting that students are interested in general in engineering. if people students are considering biomedical, there are a lot of paths that a person can take. So I think it's also important for students to recognize their own passions and desires and where their sort of interests lean. if there's any interest in biology and in medicine, healthcare, health tech, biotech. This is a great profession, great, great field to be in and I would recommend just diving in at first. Yay. Thank you, Corey, for joining us. Thanks a lot. Bye. Have fun. That our boss is gone. Bye, Corey. Okay, we'll just keep chugging along. so you are currently our only two dedicated BME faculty. So definitely want to talk about classes. what impact do you see in your classes? What Are students learning, whether that's technical skills, maybe soft skills in your classes that you think are the most impactful for them? Yeah, that's a great question. we had the first year dinners last night and I made it a point to all of the students that I talked to to let them know that the first year it's not gonna make sense. as far as the classes that you're taking and how they all interact. they all seem very disjointed in the first year. And it's really to set you up for a foundation for then taking a biomedical engineering course where you can see how it all starts to come together. one of my favorite classes to teach is biomaterials And I've heard from students who have been through the class that it is one of the first times that it really starts to click for them because we look at the nature of materials, both their mechanical, chemical, sometimes electrical properties, and how those inform design around the anatomy and physiology. So you're pulling from your physics and mechanics courses to look at. shear versus stress versus strain and how a material is going to hold up to the mechanical forces in the body. But then we also talk about polymers and polymer chemistry and how polymers break down on the body and how that's different from you know the regular environment. So I think it's a really cool class for them to be able to kind of see How these pieces fit together to help inform design. I feel like I'm on the opposite end because I teach a very weird class in that I expect my students to complete really high level complex technical work. And I spend almost zero percent of my time lecturing on any kind of technical content. part of it's because students have taken on average about like six semesters of classes before they step through the door in capstone design. And I view my job as helping them learn how to communicate all their expertise to an industry sponsor, to maybe a future employer. So what's the impact of a class like capstone design? It's really building up students' confidence to realize I actually did learn a lot in my first three years in this degree. and here's how I communicate so I get people to take me seriously, how I synthesize all this information, share it in a presentation or write it in a report in a really succinct and technical way. So that, in the future when they're walking in the door for interviews or future meetings at their future jobs, they're taken seriously as engineers because they definitely have the know-how. they've proven that before they even get to my class. But just learning how to translate all that know-how into I'm a confident and capable engineer is a completely different skill. On the flip side, what do you see challenges students the most? I think going back to my earlier point of taking classes in different departments because you touched on, we are the only two dedicated BME faculty that are housed within the BME program and all of our other faculty, even faculty that teach other core courses have homes in other departments. I find that it's really challenging or can be challenging for our students to develop that adaptability when they're taking classes alongside electrical engineers who may have had Or who definitely have a deeper, kind of broader background in electrical engineering, and they still are expected to keep pace with that. So in some ways, we speak with them on how to make it an inclusive environment for our biomed students and or applicable to having applications and problems that are BME related so they can kind of understand how it fits into the bigger picture. but I do see that that tends to be a struggle because, every department kind of has its own language too and its own set of expectations and so it's learning that adaptability I see is a hurdle for them. But once they get it it's really cool to see because that's a skill that you're forced to develop early on. I think I have a bit of like a meta answer to this, which is like not any particular class or any particular skill, but maybe connecting the dots between here's what I'm learning in lecture, here are the activities I'm doing in lecture. And they can even be open ended like something in capstan design, but still connecting it all the way to what could a future career actually look like for me. In our classes, we try as much as possible to show students what it's like to apply these skills in the real world at a job, at an internship. but sometimes that's just not enough. And so I would say for this challenge, I encourage students to seek things out in extracurricular activities, whether it's getting involved with BMES or going to BMES events to talk to students who have had these internships or maybe they've had these research experiences so that these students can go out and find their own kind of path to learn more about the biomedical engineering world. we try to squeeze as much as we can into our classes, but there's just limited time. So trying to supplement all that with your own experiences and talking to other people is a really great way to broaden your understanding of what this field is. On that note, do either of you have tips or advice for getting involved in research or internships, just knowing how the faculty side of things work. do you have any advice for students that want to get involved in that? I think my advice is just to ask. internships, especially for larger companies like Medtronic, they have a very formal, kind of rigid structure for applying. but for getting involved in research, faculty love to talk about their research and if you just introduce yourself and show interest, even looking up some of their publications they've had and learning a little bit about what they've done and then going to talk to them, the worst that they'll say is that they don't have any positions available yet, but having a face-to-face conversation goes a really long way for then remembering in the future if you reach out again to see if there's any positions. the other thing that I would recommend is creating your own opportunities. So for students that are really interested in translational work, entrepreneurship, things like that. I've advised a couple of independent studies where we had a a woman from just the boulder community reach out and ask if a couple of our students could design a personalized neck brace for her because her anatomy didn't fit the neck braces that were on the market So we ended up having a couple of students take some 3D scans of her anatomy. And then they designed it in SolidWorks and was able to 3D print here on campus for very low cost. And it ended up working out really well. So I think just keeping an ear out for opportunities like that, talking to faculty about advising independent studies in an area of interest. there's a lot of different ways to get involved, apart from the formal ones that are more heavily advertised. Yeah, I agree with everything that Jess said. if you expect to be handed an internship or a job on a silver platter, this is not the major for you. I actually don't know any majors there like that anyways. But but you definitely have to do your own legwand and finding these opportunities. And I'll say it myself. I have no shame. I just always ask. And if the answer is no, the answer is no, right? You move on from that. But I think always being able to put yourself out there for research opportunities. just getting in contact with people who might, eventually lead you to an internship down the road. these opportunities they are present. but you really have to go out and get them. kind of on top of that, going to the career fair that we have is also really helpful. Even if, you may not be eligible for an internship in the upcoming year, you can still introduce yourself to a rep and talk to them As an introverted person myself, I hate the term networking. but I've realized the older I've gotten and the more that I've focused in on what I want do. networking doesn't mean you go and you talk to every single person at the career fair and give them your elevator pitch and beg them to hire you. I encourage students, if you have an area that you're really interested in, don't try and be involved with every single club on campus because they're not gonna know what you're passionate about. If you're passionate about a certain thing, go for that thing. I think it's totally fine to to have much more quality conversations with individuals that share similar interests with you than just trying to, apply to hundreds of different internship applications with a very generic resume and cover letter. so I think focusing on a couple of areas and showing that passion goes a long way. so within the BME curriculum, we have a lot of opportunities for specialization. Do either of you have advice for figuring out what you want to specialize in. I often tell students, wait until maybe you take biomaterials, circuits, statics, you get a better picture of, electrical is not for me or this is something I really love. But do you have any other advice for figuring out what you might be passionate about Yeah, I think that's really great advice. I pretty much tell them the same thing you have time as a freshman and even as a sophomore, I think getting a little taste of everything at first. And then on top of that, an internship or research opportunity that is an area that you think might be interesting to you. you can really distill down what am I good at, what do I love, and then where do those overlap. I think two things I wanna say on this is if the end technology excites you, just go for it. And I think that's actually an area where I went wrong When I was an undergrad myself, Like when I started my undergraduate career, I hated coding. I couldn't stand it. I hated all my programming classes. And then eventually ended up in medical imaging and in my PhD, probably 80% of my work was just coding. But the end technology was so interesting, I really care that much that I was coding. I was concerned about the impact that I was potentially making, the kinds of technologies I was developing. And so I actually grew to love coding because I could see the eventual application of that. the other thing I'll say is don't be afraid to try something. It's okay if you get it wrong. my first two years when I was an undergrad, I was convinced I was gonna go to grad school for tissue engineering or something. And then I started in this lab and then actually figured out that I actually hated the day to day and it really wasn't for me. And I don't view it as two wasted years. I think it was two years learning that okay, this is not the right field for me and eventually led me to the right research lab and then eventually got into medical imaging for my PhD. So just go and try something and think about, what really excites you at the end of the day. absolutely. I tell students, sometimes you have to figure out what you don't like to figure out what you do like. So you have to kind of trial and error it sometimes. maybe kind of along the same lines, what habits or mindsets do you think can help set students up for success? Ooh, I have a good one. Okay. Go for it. teamwork. Biomedical engineering is so interdisciplinary. You're always gonna be working on these complex teams with people at different levels of expertise. I think it's really important to learn how to work with others. And it could be something as simple as we're working in a problem set together and I'm learning how to learn from someone else, or I'm learning how to teach someone else. that kind of mindset carries all the way, past senior design. But what I see in senior design is the teams that are most successful aren't necessarily the students who have the strongest technical skills. It's the students who have the best teamwork skills because they're always willing to help one another. They're always willing to kind of lean in, learn something new to help one of their teammates, and then the entire project is more successful because they have this nice collaborative atmosphere. I would say never being afraid to ask for help. when you need it is huge. I think there is this stigma around asking for help I think that in this major we try as hard as we can, us and BME S and other communities to set you up for success, especially when you don't necessarily have the motivation in those early classes to understand why you have to go through them. I think, reaching out and asking for other students' experiences of how to navigate a course and or asking faculty for deeper insight and understanding is gonna set you up really well that and then also being willing to have the drive to go out and find the answer. So not necessarily expecting that the answer is just going to be given to you. That's a huge part of engineering and open ended design is that you find the solution a lot of times by learning what doesn't work, but then also doing a lot of trial and error of what can work Fun one. What's one of the coolest projects that you've seen? I have to brag about one of my student teams. so last year we had a capstone project work on this limb warmer for winter para athletes. So essentially it's something you put in the prosthetic socket and it controls the temperature within. So these winter paraathes, they're more prone to pain, discomfort in the cold conditions. they made this as part of a national design competition, but they also entered the NIH debut competition. They were able to to win the national prize in rehabilitative technologies. so it was just such a cool project and I spoke earlier about being able to work with end users such a cool part of biomedical engineering. They worked really closely with Daniel Doc Jacobs, a veteran and winter paraath throughout the entire year. And I think it was a really cool experience for them to kind of get that feedback, learn what is gonna work, what's not gonna work, what's a good technical idea, but would never actually be feasible because a end user wouldn't actually, use those buttons or use that battery. I think it was a really cool experience for them. And I was really, really proud of the the product they made at the end. That was so cool to see that. That was so awesome. with the projects that I've helped kind of oversee much smaller scale, but I think the ones that have been the coolest are the ones that are really easy access and what I mean by that is that they're low budget and fast prototyping and they can still make really cool things. So like the neck brace being one of them. There was another independent study that I advised last summer where there was a student working in a research lab and they had a device that you would turn the knobs to stretch out mouse arteries so you could see the tensile force on the artery. And it was very tedious because you would turn it five millimeters, record the force, and then you have to set a timer for five minutes, turn it another five millimeters, and this was all manual. And she wanted to automate the process because you'd have to sit there for like three hours. Yeah. And so she made a program that could start the process and set the user up and even go through the setup process and have all the safety checks, but then also communicate with a microcontroller that would be able to turn the knob and then she also 3D printed the gears that would kind of interact with those knobs to make sure that it was really accurate. So She was using kind of these skills from all over to really help improve a process. so to James's point of if you just search biomedical engineer in Glassdoor or something like that, you're gonna get random things that pop up, but something like that would be probably along the lines of a process engineer, but for a biomedical application. And because she knew how they used it for the arteries and the physiology of the arteries and how you have to turn it really slowly and all of that. She was then able to be better for informed about the design for automating that process. it's so cool to see each year the things that they come up with. is are there any other thoughts you had that you wanted to say, something we didn't touch on. I think we talked a lot about, how do you get a job in biomedical engineering or what are the things that you can do to set yourself apart And y I'm sure students will hear similar types of advice throughout their entire academic career. biomedical engineering is a mindset, it's not necessarily a career. So you'll go into a career and you'll wear a mechanical engineer's hat or you'll wear a programmer's hat. But if you bring that biomedical engineering mindset where you Can speak these different languages, you can connect the dots between, okay, here's this gear, but we have to make it biocompatible and it has to interact with all these electrical components. that's the really valuable thing that biomedical engineers bring to the table. the great part about BME is that if you end up wanting to change paths and go down a different one, you have a lot of that foundational knowledge to follow that path. I don't wanna come off as someone who trash as other degrees. I think be being a mechanical engineer is an is an awesome path. You can do so many cool things with that degree. I think it's just a fundamental difference in what do you want to do with it. we kind of started this podcast with what excites you in the field and what got you into it. And if you're passionate about medical technologies and being able to speak these different languages and connect the dots to build the most impactful technology possible, I think biomedical engineering is a good home for you. Yay! Thank you all so much. Now that you know what this degree means and what you may be able to do with it. I'm also joined today by a current student in the BME program to give his insight on what it's like to be a BME student. please join me in welcoming Ryan Keller to the podcast. thanks for coming on the podcast. If you just wanna introduce yourself, what year in school you are, major, minors, all the extracurriculars. Yeah, for sure. My name is Ryan Keller. I'm a biomedical engineering student. I'm a third year now. I'm also pre med and I'm minoring in biochemistry. I'm originally from Colorado, Colorado Springs, and CU was kinda just a clear goal for me. Actually the only school I ever toured. wow. And the only school I've ever really even thought about attending. just the community, the nature, the campus, We're all just, very attractive to me as a high school student. So pretty hard to beat. Yeah, I think Yeah. Well tell me a little bit about your major journey. How did you decide on biomedical engineering? Were you considering other options? What made you decide to go pre med? my story is pretty non traditional for an engineer, I think. There was no like precedent for engineers, in my family. I was the first one ever that I know of, even from really my high school, to really want to be an engineer. And when I say want to be an engineer, it was also very strange in that sense that I was a high school senior. I had no clue what I wanted to do. Literally no idea. All I knew is I wanted to be pre med in something. And I had no idea what that was gonna look like. But I I always thought if I did something like a biology degree or chemistry or, something normal for pre-med, I just didn't think I would be very invested. I didn't think I'd be that much fun. And so I was at home one day with my mom. And this like towards the end of senior year, I'm about to start, applying And my mom goes, We should probably figure out what your major is I go, Yeah, probably. And I just told her, I wanna be pre med. And she pulled up the website for CU, said, Biomedical engineering is a pre med and I said, Sounds good. So I put pretty much almost no thought into being an engineer before that. I never imagined myself being an engineer and I came in with a lot of doubt about if I'm gonna be able to handle the workload and such, but I got here and now that I'm actually in it, I'd love it to death. Like there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. So Wow, that's a great story. You just happened upon it and it just worked out the way it was supposed to. Well, I guess especially given that, what surprised you the most when you started this major? I think just how interesting it was to me. I think you come in with sort of an expectation of just a lot of math and taxing, kinda hard stuff, but I found that, the actual biomed courses and some of the other, you know, mechanical or electrical, whatever were actually really interesting, Physics I thought was very fun. chemistry, a lot of people don't share that opinion. But I thought it was hot take maybe. I thought it was pretty fun. I actually really do not like math. So that was another reason I never imagined being engineer. my first ever true biomed course was the computer aided design class. Mm-hmm. We're learning about modeling and things like that. And that was one of the most interesting, one of the most, fun courses I've ever taken. So that was really what spurred me to stick with it, and I'm Happy I did. Wow. Even to this day it's still one of your favorite classes you take in. Yeah. Just 'cause the hands on aspect. you actually get to physically design stuff and make stuff. You know, in high school, I didn't really have a lot of that. It was just kind of being told what to do. Right. Prescribed everything. Yeah. So then finally actually getting to make something, it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Well, maybe along those same lines, What have you found to be the most rewarding part of this major? I think getting to grow, You know, if I look back and compare freshman year Ryan to it's a junior Ryan now. Just the amount of knowledge I've gained and the amount of, connections I've made, especially in a lot of the biomedical engineers some of them, are pre med and they have a special interest in taking care of people, treating people. So it's just good people all around. And the faculty, all really great people. So community is definitely one of the most rewarding things about it. Flip side, what's challenged you the most? there's been a lot of challenges. as a as a true engineer, you get challenged. And I think math was never a strong point of mine, the applied math department. But you just troop it through it, keep it going and you get through it. I think also as a premed, 'Cause there's some parts of the engineering that I just love so much and then there's some parts of the premed that I just love so much. And so a challenge for me has been figuring out if I even should stay on the premed track and potentially do five, ten, fifteen more years of school, something like that. Or just go the engineering route, be done in the next two years and get a job, start making some money. So I think it's challenging in that sense that There's so many pathways that it can kind of be confusing at times. Yeah. Where are you at in that almost kind of decision making process right now? I think I'm firmly in the med school camp. Mm-hmm. after freshman year, I was very much in the engineering camp. Because of just how much I enjoyed the actual engineering courses, getting to make stuff. I was like, I don't wanna do six, seven more years. O cam two O cam two I don't wanna do that. But Then that summer I went and did my EMT. So I got licensed as an EMT and did clinical ride-alongs. Got to actually be on the ambulance helping people. Wow. And so that got me back in the med school grind and super pumped about medicine again. Yeah. I mean sometimes you gotta trial and error it. You gotta try something and see if it sticks. Yep. Well, what's some of or one of the biggest skills you feel like you've developed so far in this major can be ability to use a certain tool, it can be soft skills like teamwork, communication. I think teaching maybe. you take hard courses and some people maybe don't learn it as well And so getting to study with my friends and, teaching them concepts that I knew and then them teaching concepts that they knew, it really boosted my ability to communicate, empathize, I guess, you know, see see the other person's view and then tackle a problem together in that team. being able to teach concepts, it also helps you learn better. Yes. I saw that for sure. The proven thing. It is, it is. 'Cause you go through these hard experiences together. Yeah. You build some camaraderie, so Yeah, the challenge creates the bond. Yep. what has helped you succeed academically? I think professors for sure. Coming in as a freshman, being daunted by the future ahead of me. I was very nervous going into freshman year and then I I sat down in my first ever chemistry class with Professor Fox, shout out. And Dr. Fox just had such a passion for the material and teaching and, helping his students grow and it made me realize There's a future here, I can do it. you gave me that belief in myself. So I think having mentors to look up to role models and just keeping that goal line ahead of you. Are there any clubs, organizations, extracurriculars that you recommend getting involved with? for sure the Biomedical Engineering Society is big one. Shout out to them. They do a lot of cool stuff, give a lot of pizza and ice cream out. So Yes. That was always a pick me up. It helps build connections for the future, get that LinkedIn count up, you know. Yes. I'm a big LinkedIn influencer. I didn't know this. No, that's not true. Someday. Someday I will be one day, that's the hope. Get the like ten thousand impressions or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, getting to meet those people in BME S. Also, sports clubs. I was a active member of the boxing club for a while. you gotta take a break from engineering at some point. So Yes. Gonna do something active like that. I'm sure boxing was especially cathartic. Yep. Just imagine like calculus exams. Yeah, get the frustrations out. Good. well I wanna talk a little bit about your experience getting your EMT certification and how did you find these opportunities? How did you get these opportunities? Do you have any advice for kind of putting yourself out there? you just gotta keep your head up, It's easy to retreat into yourself when you get a heavy workload is stressful. It's easy to just go to your room and lock yourself inside. But just keep your head up looking out for opportunities. the EMT license I got 'cause I wanted to be an EMT. So I just looked it up and found something in my hometown. recently I had the opportunity to go to New York and teach as a teaching assistant at Columbia University. Shout out. What? For the it's called the National Student Leadership Conference. That is awesome. So it's like a summer camp kind of deal. So I got to teach some high schoolers about engineering. and that was, very rewarding. But that was something from Handshake that I found. So Handshake is actually pretty good resource. works. Yeah. I was gonna ask how you found that. Yeah. Handshake. Wow. I never heard of a handshake success story before that, but Yeah. Newsletters, the biomedical newsletter. Be me newsletters, shout out every Tuesday. Yeah. That's great. Well kind Moving on to these pre med goals. Couple questions with that. How do you balance both your engineering degree and your pre-med goals? because I know that pre med is more than just meeting the class requirements. You gotta do clinicals, you gotta do volunteering, shadowing, all these other things. So how do you balance those two? I think it's a discipline thing, just being able to Respect your time and not spend it on things that don't help you as much. it's good to have fun, but also you're here to focus on your future. Just having that restraint and then my weekends, I go, I volunteer, I volunteer in a hospital every weekend. I study. I don't spend too much time going out I still have had good experiences. But it's just realizing that it is a lot, but it's doable. Yeah. If you put those kind of guardrails in place for yourself to understand like what is feasible, what is not, what are my goals and how am I gonna get there? sometimes you gotta choose the boring stuff over the fun stuff. That's the hard reality, but yeah. It is important to do the fun stuff. Like you said, boxing, all these outlets that you have to release stress, Well, we're in our rapid fire round, last couple of questions. So I'll ask a question, say the first thing that pops into your mind. Got it. What is the biggest misconception people have about BME? I think that it's kind of a master of none. 'cause it is multi disciplinary. You learn a lot. But that is not to its detriment. I think it's actually a pro that you learn so much because you're able to communicate, with different mechanical, electrical, chemical. You share classes with all these people too, so you get to meet way more people outside of your major, which is awesome. Thanks for debunking that. what has been one of your favorite projects so far that you've done? I think in that CAD class, we had to do some stuff and I made a little pill dispenser. It was just button activated, lots of gears and stuff. It broke the first time I used it, but it worked the first time. So I was that was pretty cool. Yeah. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your first year self? I think I would tell them to maybe try to meet more people. as a freshman everyone comes in trying to meet people. Right. So that's a big focus the first couple days, first week. It's just meet, meet, meet. And then once you do, you can just kind of make a friend group. But a lot of times that gets limited. So I think not only having that initial friend group, but also branching out more over time would have been a lot better now. Last one, what makes this major meaningful to you? I think just the intent. biomedical engineering it's not always, but it is pretty much a healthcare focus. You're focused on improving people's lives, saving lives. Cause you might not have anything else in common with, some of your peers, but at the end of the day you all care about people. That's all the questions I had. Did you have anything else you wanted to share? Any thoughts you really want the listeners to know or take away? I think just choose your friends carefully. If you have friends that skip class, you're gonna wanna skip class. So just choose your friends wisely, build good habits and focus on the goals ahead of you. I love it. Thanks, Ryan. That's all we got. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Of course. This is awesome. We did it. Yay. Easy peasy. That wraps up our episode on biomedical engineering. I hope you all enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. As always, keep your ears and eyes open for a new episode. Bye, y'all.