Penn State Engineers at BMES
This past October, the Biomedical Engineering Society hosted its annual meeting in Atlanta, GA, with nearly 4,000 attendees. The conference brings the bioengineering community together and facilitates communication about the latest advances in biomedical research. The conference also functions as a platform for professional development, collaboration, and educational progress.
Penn State’s bioengineering department was well represented in Atlanta, with 15 undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty presenting their research and communicating with the greater bioengineering community.
Niraja Suresh presents her work entitled "Using Recombinant DNA to Alter the Mechanical Domain of Kinesin Motor Proteins". Photo credit: Niraja Suresh.
Niraja Suresh, a Penn State undergraduate working with Dr. William Hancock, presented work on kinesin motor proteins. She described her BMES experience as “a wonderful opportunity to see what other people in the field have been working on and network with people from different universities. It's also a great way to communicate my work to other people, and to get different perspectives and valuable insights.”
Ramdane Harouaka, a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Siyang Zheng’s MINIBio lab, offered a graduate student perspective on the BMES conference. He presented research on doped carbon nanotube and graphene substrates for cell proliferation. Ramdane noted, “while grad students especially tend to narrow their focus onto a very specific area of their research, it's pretty easy to learn more about peripheral aspects of our projects and pursue other interests. Every time I go to BMES I learn of some new way to do stuff with PDMS.”
Andrew Higgins, a graduate student in Dr. Justin Brown’s Musculoskeletal Regenerative Engineering Lab, emphasized the importance of departmental support to travel to the conference. As the treasurer of the Penn State BMES chapter, he also mentioned that “attending lectures on how to improve our local BMES chapter was insightful and I got lots of great ideas for how to improve the club.”
Besides presenting research and attending lectures, Penn State students and faculty also enjoyed their time in Atlanta by exploring nearby sites and attending an evening BMES event at the Georgia Aquarium. The BMES conference was a motivating event for Penn State researchers, who will be integrating new ideas into their research and look forward to attending future BMES meetings.
For more information on the local BMES chapter, please go to PSU BMES Student Chapter site .
- Erin Richards, Ph.D. Candidate