Feel like solving blindness? Care to work as an equal partner with a pathbreaking professor, unobstructed by graduate students? Interested in working at the intersection of a bunch of different fields—in other words, at the cutting edge of science and engineering? Liz Orwin—once a Mudder, now an associate professor—has a project for you.
sudden IMPACT HMC FACULTY PROFILE ENGINEERING GRADUATE, HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE
WHAT HAPPENS IN HER LAB “We’re trying to tissue engineer a cornea. The bigger picture is, we’re try- ing to create tissue that could replace corneal tissue that causes blind- ness. So we’d be solving part of the problem of blindness. We’d also cre- ate a corneal model that would allow us to study the effects of new drugs and laser treatments, so we wouldn’t have to use animals.”
HOW YOU COULD WIN A SPOT IN IT “I don’t use grades as a basis for choosing students because there’s absolutely zero correlation between your grades and your performance in a lab. And I don’t look for experience; in fact, I like to recruit students early and have them stay, so by the time they’re seniors they can educate the newest recruits. What I really look for is enthusiasm for the field—students who want to make a contribution, have an impact.”
WHY YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO BE AN ENGINEER OR A BIOLOGIST “It’s an interdisciplinary project. So I put together teams of students from different disciplines. We’ve got one integrated problem that we can look at from all these different angles. And the students teach each other; some are better in the lab, some are better in the shop, some are better manag- ers or theorists. It makes the work stronger.”
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WHAT YOU’D BE CALLED “An Engman Fellow. The Engman family helps fund the project. They run a company that’s hired several of our graduates. So they know the college, and they sup- port the kind of work we do with undergraduates.”
WHY YOU WOULDN’T BE A BEAKER-SCRUBBING LACKEY “I want students to feel they’re working with me as a peer and collaborator. This is a mini-gradu-
ate school experience; they get a lot of freedom. I love it when they go out and find new ideas. I expect them to contribute to the research and to the direction of the project. My job is to get out of the way.”
LIZ ORWIN ’95
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, ENGINEERING HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE
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