The first class that made me feel like an engineer was BioE 123: Biomedical System Prototyping Lab. I knew we would be building a fermenter, and I thought that meant we’d just be putting parts together.
But no, we literally built everything from scratch. If I had to give an analogy, I’d say think about making a burrito, like actually making a burrito – growing the lettuce, harvesting the wheat for the tortilla, etc. In this class we built our own electrical circuits and sensors. We 3D printed and laser cut our own mechanical design. We even programmed the software ourselves. The cool thing was the professor was with us every step of the way, even staying one time until 1 a.m. to help.
Related spotlights
Thomas Colburn
PhD candidate
Materials Science and Engineering
I was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. We were surrounded by nature, so my siblings and friends and I spent a lot of time exploring the wilderness and getting lost in the woods.
Read Thomas Colburn's story
Kayla Patterson
MS ’24
Computer Science
I was born and raised in Robbinsville, a small town in central New Jersey.
Read Kayla Patterson's story
Adrienne Propp
PhD candidate
Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering
I never planned to become a mathematician. I liked math growing up because it made sense to me – plug this number into this equation here, and you’ll get an output that follows some predictable logic.
Read Adrienne Propp's story