BE100 Blog

1. I originally picked bioengineering because like probably half of my peers, I wanted to do pre-med. A biology or chemistry major didn't really appeal to me because if I didn't get into medical school, I would most likely enroll in graduate school and I'm not sure that's what I want to do. After doing an internship this past year at the hospital though, I became really interested in how people design synthetic biomaterials, new drugs, and artificial tissues....
2. I'm not exactly sure what bioengineers do. Before, I always imagined that bioengineers develop new materials and process for curing diseases and making better prosthetics. After hearing some Penn graduates talk, I know some people go into consulting, others do research for pharmaceutical companies, and others become professors.
3. For my senior year in high school, I did a mentorship in the endocrinology department at a hospital in Va. My mentor does numerous research in diabetes, insulin, and metformin. Likewise, I really loved the subject as well. Thus if I had a chance to go back in history to work on some biomedical technology, I would like to have been around Banting and Best isolated insulin, and later in history when other scientists perfected other drugs like Lantus and Humalog.
4. I want to learn as much as I can about everything in bioengineering, especially how prosthetic hearts, valves and other materials are made, which will definitely take a lot longer than 4 years.
5. For now, I really want to learn how researchers develop the right kind of drugs for a particular diseases. For example, how do they program the cure or medicine to target a specific organ part or various cells. In addition, I really want to learn how the body builds resistance against a drug and how researchers can solve that problem other than increasing the dosage or just giving another medicine.
6. Hospitals have dialysis for kidney failures, but what about livers? http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/vt-ett091409.php This article talkes about Va Tech researchers trying to create tissues that will mimic the liver. Though liver transplants are available, they are extremely dangerous and pose high risk of rejection by the recipient. These group of researchers will try to assemble a 3D model that can mimic liver cells in vitro. I think it's really great how modern technology is able to help researchers create more and more methods to cure diseases. Maybe if I can, I would like to do research in this area later as well.
7. I'm interested in genetic engineering as well, especially the clinical aspect of it. For example, I want to learn how researchers are trying to alter a part of a person's DNA to make them less susceptible to a disease and in general, just more about genes and DNA.