This past summer, the SBME Synergy Undergraduate Summer Research Program provided research opportunities for students interested in a career in biomedical engineering. The undergraduate students had hands-on research experience, were exposed to a wide range of biomedical disciplines and technologies, developed transferable skills, and gained insights into career options. We caught up with two students- Aditya and Sabine, to learn more about their experience in the program.
Aditya Swaro
Aditya is a third-year undergraduate student at UBC studying cellular and molecular neuroscience. Aditya was supervised by Dr. Mark Cembrowski for the SBME Synergy program.
This past summer, Aditya used machine learning techniques in R to analyze Traumatic Brain Injury spatial transcriptomics data. To make this analysis accessible to other researchers, Aditya also developed a web portal to host this data.
“I’m interested in exploring connectomics. In particular, I want to develop tools to see how neuron-to-neuron interactions at the molecular level relate to changes in behavior,” says Aditya.
Aditya placed second at the Synergy research day where he gave his talk on the Web Portal he built, ‘TBISeq’. Aditya hopes to be a clinician-scientist in the future to explore neuroscience in a clinical setting.
Sabine Lim
Sabine is currently a a third-year undergraduate student in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Victoria. This past summer she worked in the Orthopedic and Injury Biomechanics Group (OIBG) lab of Drs. Tom Oxland and Peter Cripton at ICORD.
In the SBME Synergy program, Sabine worked on designing and developing an omnidirectional surrogate neck for the evaluation of protective equipment to prevent cervical spine injuries. It will be used as an anthropometric test device to better understand the types of injuries caused in the cervical spine.
“I really enjoy the hands-on experience, research project work, and mentorship I’ve received in the lab this summer. It’s been truly an amazing learning experience and has been such a great opportunity for me to work closely with researchers, engineers, and PI’s working in my field,” says Sabine.
