April 2009

OverAchievers:Why they’re great, & how YOU can do it too!Aileen Li ’10 & Rohan Trivedi ’10

! Meet Ted Chen. Ted Chen arrived at Georgia Tech for his freshmen year in 2006. He has since been rocking the BME de-partment and is now graduating a year early. Let’s learn more.

Q: How many classes/hours did you have to end up taking per semester to graduate in 3 years?A: I usually try to fit 21 hours into each semester when I can, whether its research, fun classes, anything! Usually, though, I have to sacri-fice not registering for classes since it would put me well over 21 hours.

Q: Did you come in with any AP/IB/Joint Enrollment Cred-its?

A: I came in with 27 AP credits.

Q: Are you involved in any ex-tracurricular activities?

A: Yes. I am currently on Presi-dents' Council Governing Board, the Student Advisory Board for Undergraduate Research, the Tai-wanese American Student Asso-ciation, Engineering World Health, The Tower, Alpha Eta Mu Beta, M&M Mentoring Program, Georgia Tech Symphony Orches-tra, chamber ensemble, and un-dergraduate research.

Q: What did you gain from the undergraduate research experi-

ISSUE FOUR VOLUME THREE APRIL , 2009

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A GT-BMES STUDENT PUBLICATION FOR THE COMMUNITY OF GT-BME

‣ Give us your feedback!

‣ Donate some funds!

‣ Make some comments & suggestions!

‣ Simply send an e-mail to

[email protected] or [email protected]!

‣ Increase your BME knowledge!

‣ Connect to the profession!

‣ Interact with fellow BME students and faculty

‣ Inside an over-achiever’s life!

‣ Interviews with recent BME graduates!

‣ Christina Duden revisits us after her BMES presentation!

What’s Inside?

Contribute to this Newsletter!

Join BMES!

http://irene.bme. gatech.edu/bmesab/BMES/index.php

Ted Chen, Class of ’09, is running for SGA President. Vote for him!

mailto:[email protected]




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ence?

A: I have learned how to approach problems differently as well as managing my own project and timeline. If I am not in class, I am probably in the research lab. It has given me skills we do not learn in classes and a glimpse into gradu-ate school and beyond.

Q: How did you manage your time between studying, classes, extracurricular activities, and social events?

A: I am actually pretty bad at bal-ancing my time. I usually just do what needs to get done and try to not to worry about time manage-ment too much. It has worked for me pretty well thus far.

Q: Most engineers and even lib-eral arts majors have trouble graduating in 4, and many have to graduate in 5 years when they couple their time here with in-ternships. Did you do an intern-ship or take summer classes?

A: I took summer classes after my first year but realized that I did not like being stuck around Tech year-round. After sophomore year, I did

a summer research internship at Rice University, and this sum-mer, I will be working at the Na-tional Institute of Health.

Q: As you may know, there is a saying at Tech that you get to pick 2 out of the following 3 at Tech: 1) Grades, 2) Friends, 3) Sleep. Did you ever have to make that choice? How much did your fast-track out of Tech impact your personal life?

A: I am lucky because sleep does not really affect me. I get a couple hours and still function just fine. Taking a full course load defi-nitely forces me to cut down on sleep, since I cannot do without grades or friends! Graduating a semester early kind of just hap-pened, so it did not really affect my personal life that much.

Q: Which class did you find to be the toughest at tech? The most memorable?

A: The toughest? Any class I do not find interesting is usually pretty hard for me. The most memorable [class] is probably BMED 2210. It was unique in the way it was taught (I took it with


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‣ Contact Melody Keith at [email protected] or Alice Chan at

[email protected] to see what you can do for the BME Pioneer!

Be Part of It.

BMES Pioneer Editorial Board

Editor in ChiefAlice Chan ’10

Melody Keith ‘09

Layout EditorsChun Yong ’12

Features EditorRebekah Hamrick ’10

Staff WritersWilla Ni ’12

Alysia Rudis ’09Natalia Cuenca ’12Rosemary Song ’12

Allaine Dela Cruz ’12Aileen Li ’10

Nancy Kim ‘12

PhotographersMichael Glatzer ’12

Kiersten Petersen ’10

Development EditorsRohan Trivedi ’10

Constantly being under high stress is not very good for your health, and learning how to just get out and enjoy college is definitely something I am glad I did.

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Professor Lee) and offered a fun challenge.

Q: When you look back at your life at Tech, What are some of the most memorable things you will be taking away with you?

A: Definitely the blend of aca-demics and social life that many students strive to balance. Al-though Tech is notorious for being an academically demanding [insti-tution], students still find time to explore other avenues such as clubs, intramurals, and research. People strive to be better than "just an engineer".

Q: Are there some things you would have done differently during your time at Tech?

A: I used to study a lot, but now I have learned to be more laid back and take things as they come. Constantly being under high stress is not very good for your health, and learning how to just get out

and enjoy college is definitely something I am glad I did.

Q: What are you planning on doing when you graduate from Tech?

A: Currently, I plan on continuing on to graduate school and earn my PhD. Afterwards I hope to con-tinue research either in academia or with another institution.

Can I Get A Job?Yes you can! According to BME alumni Christine WilsonNancy Kim ‘12

! To all the BMEs! Does the following conversation sound familiar to you?

! Even though this is a commonly accepted fact, there is

still hope for us all! I had a great opportunity to do an interview with Christine Wilson, a ’07 BME graduate, who currently works as a business consultant at Accen-ture. In her interview, Wilson shared her journey as a Tech BME undergraduate and left a few words of advice!

! Christine Wilson gradu-ated with an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering at Tech in December 2007. She received a job at Accenture as a Business


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What’s your major?

Oh, I’m A BME!

Man, good luck.

BMEs have one of the toughest time getting a job.

Consultant. Accenture is a con-sulting company that works with a variety of industries “to help them become high-performance busi-nesses and governments.”

! The work Wilson does at Accenture is not at all related to the BME field but is more towards IE. She highly recommends to those interested in the consulting field, especially business consult-ing, to take some IE courses be-cause consulting and IE highly correlate.

! BME and IE may seem to have little common ground, but they actually do. Both require critical thinking. Wilson writes, “It is very important to recognize that consulting is an extremely broad field. Many of the classes that we take as BMEs develop us as criti-cal thinkers and flexible thinkers. Although I may not be using my system physiology or my thermo-

dynamics knowledge, those classes challenged me and re-quired me to think critically. Con-sulting requires you to think out-side the box, so despite the fact that I do not do anything related to BME, my education was not a complete waste of time.”

! She also recommends some basic computer science classes such as C, Visual Basic, or SQL. With these skills, Wilson tells that it will put an individual a step ahead of his or her cowork-ers.

! When Wilson was a freshman at Tech, she had a pas-sion for “working in a lab creating vaccines for diseases using stem cell research”. However, her cur-rent work is not even close to her dream job she had when she was a freshman. How did this happen? She took advantage of the great opportunity that Georgia Tech provided: the Co-op program! Af-ter putting in some hard effort, Wilson was able to find a co-op job with a BME related company. Although unable to do stem cell


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Profile Name: Christine Wilson Major: Biomedical Engineering Job: Business Consultant at Accenture Description: Assists in systems implementation Website: www.accenture.com/ Global/About_Accenture/ default.htm

Consulting requires you to think outside the box, so despite the fact that I do not do anything re-lated to BME, my education was not a complete waste of time.

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research, she was able to “work in a lab and assist in designing new products for the company.” !! Thanks to her co-op expe-rience, she realized “that industry and lab work was NOT” for her. She writes that, “if it wasn’t for her co-op, [she] would have never realized” this and might have ended up with the wrong job she would regret for years. Wilson strongly wishes to advise the BME majors to “take the time, even if it mean an extra semester” to explore various industries that relate to BME. In other words, BME students, experiences from co-ops, internships, research, and shadowing could be a turning point in your life, which may save you from a job that you may strongly regret!

What’s Next After BME?An interview with a recent BME graduate Ms. Inn-Inn Chen.David Kim ‘09

! I interviewed with Ms. Inn-Inn Chen, a recent graduate of the Georgia Tech BME depart-ment. She currently studies as a graduate student at the University of Oxford in England. In this in-terview, Ms. Chen shares with us her experience at Tech and how she was so successful.

Q: What are your professional goals when you leave Tech?

A: I see myself becoming an aca-demic professional. Specifically, teaching as a professor and being a principal investigator of a lab. I would like to conduct my own research in a specific area of bio-medical engineering, and teach on the side at whatever academic in-stitution I am working at.

Q: Why did you pick Tech for schooling and did it meet you expectations?

A: I knew I wanted to do bio-medical engineering, and Georgia Tech had a really strong program in the area, which was the main reason I picked Georgia Tech. It exceeded my expectations on the research side. I think there are so many research opportunities available for undergraduate stu-dents within the department, which makes the program unique. I think overall it did meet my ex-pectations. It was different. It was definitely different from what I expected from a curriculum per-spective with the PBL courses, the different classes, and the way they


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I think there are so many re-search opportunities available for undergraduate students within the department, which makes the program unique. ”

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Recent BME graduate Inn-Inn Chen currently studies at the University of Oxford in England.

were all structured. I understand now that it has changed a little bit, so maybe there have been im-provements in certain classes that didn’t meet my expectations when I was there. Other than that, I think the research side of things at Tech met my expectations.

Q: As you may know, there is a saying at Tech that you get to pick 2 out of the following 3 at tech: 1) Grades, 2) Friends, 3) Sleep. Did you ever have to make that choice? How much did your years at Tech impact your personal life?

A: I would agree with that state-ment. Many a time I sacrificed sleep over other things to get things done. But I think that is the whole college experience. It is not just about the grades. It is about the relationships that you form, the extracurricular activities you take part in, the research, the lead-ership, and the industrial experi-ences. And I think those take time and they are a hugely important part of the undergraduate curricu-lum, so you do need to take time for those.

Q: How did you spend your summers during your college years?

A: I did research my whole time at Georgia Tech. My freshman summer I went abroad with a pro-gram with Engineering World Health to volunteer at a develop-ing world hospital. And all the summers after that, I did research. So one summer I did research at Georgia Tech and took one class, Digital Signal Processing. And the following summers after that, I went to NIH to do research there.

Q: Why would you recommend research for undergraduate stu-dents?


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Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

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Last Day of Classes (April Fools)

2 3 4

Tech Beautification Day

5 6 7 8

Early Registration for Fall 2009 Begins

9 10 11

12

Easter

13

Green Rally

14 15 16

17th Annual Suddath Symposium

17 18

Pi Mile 5k Road Race

20 21 22

Earth Day

23 24

Last Day of Classes (Really)

27 28 29 30 1

April 2009

* FINALS WEEK *

A: I think that the most important thing I learned aside from the technical skills is how you gain knowledge about biological ques-tions that haven’t been answered before. In the classroom, you’re

always given a textbook, and eve-rything stated in a textbook are facts. These facts weren’t always known to everyone, meaning they had to be discovered somehow. And the way they were discovered were by scientists in labs doing research. So I think it’s really im-portant for students to do research because they start to learn the process of how you actually dis-cover things that you read about or study about in the classroom. It teaches you how to think critically and ask important questions, so even if you don’t do research, you learn great skills whether you go to industry or some other form of grad school. Q: What was your study abroad experience like?

A: My experience was very unique because I went to a devel-oping country, so it makes you appreciate what you have here, such as political stability and in-

frastructure, which allows you to focus on your own life and pursue your own dreams. When I was abroad, I went to El Salvador, which was politically stable, but socially there was a lot going on. So you see how challenging life is

for those people, when they don’t have access to healthcare.

Q: What helped you be success-ful during your years in college?

Knowing at every point in your career what you want and that can change as frequently as it needs to. But I think looking at it in a bigger context and doing what you want to do, because if you don’t do something you’re passionate about, you will

become burnt out. I was lucky, because I find research, classes and activities outside the class-room that I were really passionate about. So you get this energy that you don’t normally get if you weren’t so behind everything you were doing. And if you’re not pas-sionate about something, try to find something you are, because life is so short to do something that you are not 100% behind. Once you do find it, I think you can stand by your work, see where it is going, and achieve the bigger picture after you graduate from

Georgia Tech.

Christina


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It’s really important for students to do research because they start to learn the process of how you actually discover things that you read about or study about in the classroom...

It teaches you how to think critically and ask important questions, so even if you don’t do research, you learn great skills whether you go to industry or some other form of grad school.”

“

Inn-Inn Chen working in her research lab.

Duden: A familiar face gives the newsletter some more feedback!Willa Ni ‘12

! Christina Duden, a Geor-gia Tech alum and BME major, returned to talk to the members of BMES about her position at CryoLife as a clinical research associate (CRA). Besides reveal-ing the process behind CryoLife’s many medical devices and their journey to market, Duden also brought back real life experience as a post-Georgia Tech BME ma-jor. Her path, while not straight and narrow, does shine light on life with a BME degree. From ca-reer choice to interviews, Duden relays interesting and important information on the world beyond the Georgia Tech bubble.

Q: From your presentation, we got the gist of the processes be-hind getting a medical invention onto the market. Not only is your clinical research associate job not the typical R&D job, but you've had ample experience with the non-typical BME job. How did you decide to teach high school and what made you

decide that was not the path for you.

A: I mentored and tutored middle and high school students in sci-ence and math for several years before going into the classroom, so it was a very natural transition for me. By the second semester, and several headaches later, I came to the conclusion that if I stayed in the classroom I would be teaching the same material over and over for the next 30 years. I wanted something more progres-sive.

Q: I understand that you were lucky in applying for and receiv-ing a job that you enjoy. For other people that may not have such luck and are in the same position of not knowing what to do with their BME degree, what would you suggest?

A: It’s helpful to remember that you are learning about the Biomedical/Biotech field and not just engineering, so your degree isn’t only appreciated in R&D. In fact, to work your way up to the top of the ranks in R&D, you’ll most likely need a PhD. Keep your mind open to all the other possibilities: Quality, Clinical,

Regulatory, and even Marketing (for those with business acumen). Q: What do you enjoy about your job? You mentioned that your job offered travel opportu-nities. For students looking into being a clinical research associ-ate, what other interests should they have?

Let me preface this answer by let-ting you know that I was totally against having a desk job and it certainly has been an adjustment. In clinical, we do travel a good bit – it will be more or less depending on whether you’re doing clinical research for a Clinical Research Organization or a private biotech company. I read a lot of journal articles and I write a lot; if you don’t enjoy doing those things, you would not enjoy doing my job. I think the best part of my job is that I haven’t yet had the same day twice. I’m constantly chal-lenged to learn new therapeutic areas and apply what I learn to my


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fo$owing interventional cardiothoracic surgery. This is one of the many great products that CryoLife offers.

Student Voice #1

“He had a Matlab

shirt...”

Student Voice #2 “DSP - You’ll never know what hit ya”

job functions – for me, those things are enjoyable.

Q: How does the job field really look like for BME graduates? We've got statistics, but from your experience what is out there in terms of jobs and op-portunities. Also, you said that the BME degree wasn't as mar-ketable as ME or EE degrees. What can current students do to enhance their degrees?

I can only speak from personal experience, but I found that many biotech companies wanted me-chanical or electrical engineers with a bit more experience with certain software packages or skills. At career fairs BMEs had

trouble giving away their resumes.On any interview it’s very impor-tant to talk about “transferable skills,” or those skills that you take with you wherever you go. Thankfully, one transferable skill that our BME program empha-sizes to is the ability to work as part of a team. Interviewers will love to hear about your experi-ences with the intro BME courses. Play it up and make the focus about how well you communicate and work through challenging situations and deadlines as part of a group. In nearly every interview I’ve ever had, the person on the opposite side of the table has asked “So what do you do for fun?” Binge drinking and “hang-ing out” are never acceptable re-

sponses to this question so use common sense. Have hobbies and be prepared to expand on your responses. From my experience hobbies that people enjoy hearing about have been tutoring, re-search, and reading. Hobbies/interests beyond engineering make you a bit more human. Also, if you’re interviewing with a Tech alum (and you should know this because you should research your interviewers and the company be-fore you go…), know the latest football/basketball stats and be prepared to discuss. It will come up.

Q: Any other comments on life, a BME degree, or the experience of a CRA?

A: Apply for everything that looks interesting. Don’t take yourself too seriously. And remember if you’re not having fun, it’s just work.


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Chris: I read the BME Newslet-ter all the time when I’m at the beach or working in lab. It’s like I’m suddenly clear-headed and make decisions quickly.

Jessica: I love the BME Newsletter. Reading it makes the LCC 3401 so much more interesting. I can’t wait to show the professor what effective writing style it has! Kudos!

Personal Testimonies

The BME Pioneer thanks their readers the support they have given this past year. We wish every-one great luck on their final exams, congratulates all those who are graduating, and hopes that you all have a safe summer!

Documents

April 2009