3rd annual Bio-Med Tech-Girls

The 3rd annual Bio-Med Tech-Girls starts this week on August 8. This week-long experience provides an opportunity for high school students to get a hands-on, behind-the-scenes peek at biomedical research happening right now at U.Va. Special emphasis is placed on sharing projects and meeting researchers, faculty, and students who help incorporate technology and engineering into the field. Taking part this year will be students from eight area schools: Albemarle High School, Covenant School, Deep Run High School, Grace Christian School, Miller School, Monticello High School, St. Anne's-Belfield School, and Western High School.

This program will begin at St. Anne's-Belfield School on August 8, where participants will meet with undergraduate students from U.Va. and work with state-of-the-art technology in the School's Computer Science Lab. A guest speaker from U.Va.'s Children's Hospital will also present.

The rest of the week will be spent at U.Va. working on a design challenge inspired by patient experiences at the Children's Hospital, culminating in a visit to the iLab where participants will hone their prototypes and designs and ultimately present their work at on Friday, August 12 at 4:00 p.m. at the Bio-Med Tech-Girls Reception. The reception is open to the public, though RSVPs are requested.

More information may be found at www.tech-girls.org/bio-med or by contacting Tech-Girls founder and St. Anne's-Belfield School teacher Kim Wilkens at kwilkens@stab.org.

They taught me a lot

The first person I chose was Dasha Tyshlek. She had so many great ideas and it was amazing to get to hear all of them. Not only did she just tell us about her ideas, but she did a mini pitch for us which was so helpful and taught me a lot. The next person I chose was Kim Kelly. I thought her study using the genetically modified mice was so fascinating. When she was talking about how treatments for cancer today impact all parts of your body rather than just the part with cancer, it made a lot of sense and seemed very interesting. I would love to find out more about her study. Joie

Day 3

Kelly Lab Tour

The Kelly Lab Tour was probably one of the most interesting lab tours I have been on so far! Learning more about how phages are involved with cancer was really interesting, especially work with the animations and thorough explanations!

Munson Lab Tour

The Munson Lab Tour really helped me understand how cancer cells work and what research they're currently doing to help maybe cure cancer someday! The hands-on playdoh activity was also great and helped get me thinking about what tumors look like! Thanks again!

Day 3

Carl and Anita really helped my partner and me today at lunch in refining our ideas about how to prototype our design. They even showed us a similar first-stage prototype that was very helpful in solidifying our concept of the prototype we want to build. In addition, it was really helpful to be able to bounce ideas off of them and get a perspective from current students in the discipline.

The Papin lab tour was really interesting, especially learning about the exponentially increasing complexity resulting from adding just one additional factor into a system or network. The cross-disciplinary aspects of the research there, which included some software usage and mathematical modeling, exemplified the efforts made in BME to use all resources available to find solutions to a problem.

Thursday Reflection

The Peirce-Cottler Lab was incredibly interesting. The bioprinter seems like it has a lot of potential, and the fact that it can print viable tissue is mind blowing to me. The projects they were working on seemed really groundbreaking, like the contact lenses to help regenerate eyes with certain kinds of blindness.

Kim Wilkens is a great teacher; she makes daunting tasks like creating a prosthetic arm seem doable. The work that she's done with TechGirls is inspiring. I appreciate that she has the capability to be engineering complicated, lucrative equipment, but instead she spreads the knowledge and teaches others how to do it as well.

Many Thanks!

Rachel Smith:  Rachel was very sweet and affable from the start. I loved, and still love, getting to know her and her past researches, and I especially am thankful for her eagerness to answer my many questions! The fact that she's spending a part of her summer helping us grow intellectually and providing us with amazing opportunities is very appreciated, so thank you, Rachel!! (By the way, your name is pretty dope.)

Nicole Deal: I admire how Dr. Deal took a chunk of her valuable time to come talk to us. I truly felt lucky to have gotten the chance to talk to such a successful, orthopedic surgeon, who is in fact the only female in her department. What really impacted my train of thought was when she told us that we have plenty of time to truly decide on what career we want to pursue in, and that she didn't even positively know what she wanted to pursue in during college. I've realized that I shouldn't try so hard to narrow my interests so quickly and to have an open, flexible mind. Thank you Dr. Deal for letting us steal some of your time!

Rachel

Nicole Deal: We got to talk to Dr. Deal on our first day, which was really cool. She was super nice, and she had a lot of great stories and advice. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us!

Kim Kelly: Today's tour of the Kelly lab was really interesting, especially with all of the detailed explanations of her research. Learning about how phages could be used to treat cancer and the research process was great. Thank you for a wonderful tour!

-Andria

Hi everyone! Today I chose to write about the Munson lab tour and guest speaker, Dasha Tyshlek. Right when Dasha started speaking about her inventions I was taken. She does the type of work that I one day hope to pursue. To know that someone who is just out of college is making things that could help patients almost be back to normal condition after surgery is incredible! As far as the Munson lab tour goes, I feel the same way about that. Because I have seen people go through cancer, I can personally connect so well to what we were shown. Knowing the fact that one day some cancer could be cured is an "out of this world" thought! Seeing the way cancer reacts with different somatic cells and how it spreads so rapidly really makes me want to help with finding cures some day. Well, that is all for now. I look forward to seeing y'all one last time tomorrow. Best, Morgan.

Thank You!

Thank you, Munson lab, for showing us around and speaking with us about your cancer research! It was super exciting to hear about current research and developments. The Play-Doh activity was great, and it was awesome to walk around and see your lab. Thanks so much again!

A shoutout to Carl and Anita for helping us out with our projects and talking with us about college and future advice! Thanks for offering tips and suggestions on thinking outside the box with our prototypes and ideas. You guys are awesome!

Day Two Reflection

Prosthetic Hand:

I played a board game with my cousin and it was really challenging. Everytime I wanted to draw a card and move my piece, I had to do it in two different steps (first pick up the card, then move the piece). It also wasn't that easy cleaning up the board game after playing it...

Stephanie Gomes:

I really enjoyed the bioprinter and the concept of regenerating limbs. It really showed how quickly technology, along with the medical field is progressing. Dr. Gomes really showed me that biomedical engineering is such an amazing field!

Nicole Deal:

I appreciated how she showed that women are able to do surgeries just like men. I'm not sure why, but I found her stories really interesting, and it has definitely convinced me to look into the Orthopedic field!

Message of Appreciation

Thank you to Josh Aronson for setting up the Rube Goldberg machine challenge. While it was certainly difficult and not entirely successful, the process was very interesting and informative about the difficulties of working towards an end instead of backward from a need.

Thanks as well to David Chen, who is dedicating so much of his time and effort to help us explore the field of Biomedical Engineering. His contribution to the program is clearly integral to it being as successful as it is.

Performing basic tasks with a residual limb

I typed this blog-post using only one hand, which was pretty tedious but not too challenging overall. I think it would probably be much harder if I were using my non-dominant hand for the task. In terms of eating, it was difficult to get stuff to the table and hold things still beforehand, but actually using a fork and all wasn't too hard. A lot of the basic tasks that are normally automatic, though, like getting dishes and utensils out and  getting a drink out of the refrigerator and such was hard to do with just one hand.

Day 2 Reflection

I wore the glove while playing a card game with my sister, and that was very difficult. I had to hold the cards up to my chest with the "prosthetic" arm and then pick out which one I wanted with my real hand. Also, everytime my sister handed me a card I had to sit down my stack, take the card, add it to the stack, and pick it back up again.

Stephanie Gomes was very interesting and I loved seeing the bioprinter. She didn't say anything about being foreign, but I thought it was admirable that she came to America to study biomedical engineering and she seems so good at what she does. The bioprinter was amazing to see. Matt, Greg, and Jenny were all very interesting as well. I really like microbiology and so I thought them studying bacteria was really cool, and it made me want to learn more about it since Jenny is going to Copenhagen (I want to travel with whatever I do).

Olivia

Making a difference

One of the people I chose was Nicole Deal. I found her particularly interesting because of how much she has accomplished. She was very open to us asking questions, and didn't hold back the truth while answering. I enjoyed how she seemed so willing to help us achieve or goals.

The next person I chose was Eileen Krepkovitch. I was extremely interested in her work with the technology she's using in the sleeves. I think it's amazing that she found a way to help provide amputees with the same health technology (fitbits, etc.) as us. I think she's really making a difference for those people and I would love to find out more about her research!

Joie

Day #2 Reflection

Prosthetic Hand: As I am currently typing using only my right hand, the unnecessary wideness of the keyboard is frustrating me. It seems very inefficient to have such a large keyboard, when a smaller, more compact one would be faster to use, especially if you only have one hand. Also, I'm noticing that having to "jump" my one hand around from one key to the next is very unstable, tiring, and tedious, and since the touch pad is located in the middle edge, I can't rest my forearm so that I can reach most of the keys without my whole hand having to jump around. It would be really nice to have one of those "swipe" key boards on computers and laptops, which would be more forgiving to inexactness.

I also got to cook (more like stir soup) and have a meal with this residual limb, and while the eating part wasn't necessarily too hard, the stirring soup part was fairly difficult and dangerous. Due to the thick viscosity of the soup, the pot kept trying to slide off the stove top as I stirred, so I had to use my stomach as a placeholder and barrier from falling onto the floor. As common sense would tell you, the pot was burning hot, so the use of my stomach to stop it from sliding off the stove was minimal and erratic, therefore, I could barely stir the soup. I realized the simple task of stirring was surprisingly strenuous and risky.

Shayn Peirce-Cottler (Stephanie Gomes): At Dr. Shayn's lab, we were introduced to the idea of regenerating injured and diseased tissues, using the precious Bio-Printer. The Bio-Printer uses the cells, like the average printer uses ink, in order to replicate real cell tissue. Although the printing of whole organs is a long ways ahead of us, their lab is on the road to using stem cells to repair eyes and vision, currently being tested on mice. I am inspired by how they are taking advantage of the human stem cells to do tasks beyond what they were created to do. Hopefully, one day, the Bio-Printer will be printing hearts, brains, livers, etc., and saving lives by the thousands.

George Joseph Christ: Dr. Christ was generous enough to personally talk to us about his research on regenerative skeletal muscle, soon to go on to clinical trials. He explained to us that, initially, they do a biopsy on someone to get a sample of their cells, culture and grow the cells, salvage the myoblasts, put them in a scaffold, and incubate them until it shapes into skeletal muscle. This is a bold approach in developing not just an exact replica of skeletal muscle, but a stronger, more regenerative, artificial muscle, which is a very inspiring and innovative step in the medical field.

Thank you to everyone who gave us her/his valuable time!

Rachel

Tying a Shoe With Prosthetic Arm

Not being able to complete a simple task that everyone else can do can be physically and emotionally frustrating. In this video, a guy shows us how to tie a shoe using his prosthetic arm-- while smiling the biggest, most optimistic smile. What made me choose this video was more due to the emotional, optimistic aspect of it than the physical aspect. Of course the act of this man simply controlling his prosthetic hand in a span of 20 seconds to tie his shoelaces was surprisingly fast and nimble, but his motivation to encourage the rest of the prosthetic-using community was more inspiring. People tend to sulk in their own despair after a huge loss, feeling bad for themselves, but this man took the initial step to tell them that it's okay, that they can still successfully complete simple tasks. His attitude the whole way through was, "Why not? You can do it."

Rachel

Rachel Smith: Rachel has been super nice and approachable from the start. She's incredibly enthusiastic about everything, and she has been very welcoming to all of us. Thank you so much for organizing this and helping introduce us to this wonderful field of science.

George Christ: Dr. Christ was very nice and informative when he talked to us today. His research is super interesting, and I would love to learn more about regenerative medicine. Plus, it was awesome to see so many undergrads working in his lab, which makes me (even more) excited for college. Thank you for taking time to talk to us and explain your incredible research to us.

-Andria

Wednesday Reflection

Glove Prosthetic 

Upon wearing a glove as a residual limb for about half an hour, I feel like I can now *begin* to empathize with people who have actual prostheses. Not being able to function at full capacity in a body part can be incredibly disabling; my right arm was a bit sore from overcompensating by the time I was done. One effect that I didn't expect was psychological, however. I found that I was embarrassed by the glove on my hand. I didn't want my family to see it and start questioning me. I can only begin to imagine how people with actual prostheses feel.

Two Inspiring People

One of the people I selected is Rachel Smith. When I met Rachel, I was immediately struck by her enthusiasm for what she does. She's also passionate about getting others involved in BME, which I find inspiring. I like how she is always pushing us to think creatively, even about seemingly simple tasks. I've learned much of what I know about BME from her, and she makes it sound pretty great.

I also chose David Chen's name. He seems altruistic to me- the way he dedicates much of his time to teaching undergraduates or working with programs like TechGirls. He even offered us a spot in his potentially lucrative project to design a video game controller. His motivation seems to be more complex than money or success and I find that inspiring. 

-Megan

Thank you, George Christ lab and Jason Papin lab!

A shoutout to the Christ and Papin labs for showing and telling us about some neat stuff today. 

The work the Christ lab was doing, with the muscles and their participation in researching for a better life for people without limbs (especially injured veterans), was really neat and had a very strong real-world application. Thank you so much for telling us about that!

The activity with the Papin lab was fun, and they also did a superb job with introducing us to systems biology. Thanks a bunch for showing us around the lab, telling us about the research you do, and speaking with us about the process with computer models and experiments!

I have just now eaten dinner with my "prosthetic." I didn't find it as challenging as I expected it to be because I my left hand doesn't really function for me. However, I did notice when trying to get some of the last bit of food off of my plate it was challenging.
Now, on to my people that I chose to write about. I chose Nicole Deal and Eileen Krepkovich. I don't know what in particular it was but overall I was very interesting in what they talked about. Dr. Deal was able to show that women can be just as skilled as men when it comes to doing surgeries all day. I suppose I was also interested in her because of my background with orthopedic surgery. I was interested in what Eileen Krepkovich brought to show us because I am interested mor win the equipment part of biomedical engineering. I thought the idea of being able to track simple things that were not so simple for people without a limb was very inventive.
That is all, see you guys tomorrow !