an independent project with a grant from HMC’s Shanahan Endowed Fund. He envisions starting a medical device com- pany and working in bioengineering “any way that I can.” Although the program is young (begun in 2001), the net-
work of HMC bioengineers is already strong. “We’ve built a really interesting alumni community,” Orwin says. Alumni answer questions about their graduate school programs via email and interact with students at conferences and other events. Ajay Shah ’06, CEO of Cytovale, a medical diagnostics
company, has blazed a trail for other bioengineering Mudders to follow. As an undergrad, he worked with Orwin on the cornea project and on two Clinic projects involving bioengi- neering. He later earned a Ph.D. in health sciences and technology at the Harvard Medical School/MIT joint program. While working at Massachusetts General Hospital, he hired half a dozen Mudd students or graduates as interns or full-time technicians to assist with the development of a platform to isolate rare circulating tumor cells from whole blood. “It was a very dynamic clinical environment where we were interacting not only with Ph.D.- and faculty-level bioen- gineers but also with biologists and clinicians,” Shah says. Later, Shah’s startup, Insight Surgical Instruments,
sponsored a Clinic project on the development of a new neurosurgical device. “We had a very engaged student team that, quite frankly, surpassed expectations,” Shah says. “They were able to develop a series of prototypes that we’ve gone on to protect with international IP fi lings.” Shah’s enthusiasm for his fellow Mudders stems from
his own experiences. “The cross-disciplinary training you get at Mudd is particularly helpful in bioengineering because, naturally, it’s a fi eld that draws on many areas.” Orwin recruits students from all majors because it
enhances the program. “These are interdisciplinary prob- lems,” she says. “Coming at them from an interdisciplinary approach is a good thing.”
Top image: Nose models of varying stiffnesses are used to calibrate a nasal tip cartilage testing device. Elizabeth Orwin ’95 (center), shown with Vincent Pai ’12 and Hannah Troisi ’11, considers students in her lab to be colleagues. “I want them to feel creative and in charge of their own projects,” she says.
Using his engineering skills to solve biological problems, Demetri Monovoukas ’15 developed an independent project: a hand-held wound measurement device that will aid in the treatment of pressure ulcers.
This June, Kacyn Fujii ’13 will begin research, funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, with Stanford Professor Kwabena Boahen, who links electronics and computer science with neurobiology and medicine.
SPRING 2013 Har vey Mudd College 23
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