FOSTERING

The Council was dedicated to ensuring that students’ potential to succeed at the graduate level was evaluated on skills and merit not necessarily evident in academic grades. Bioengineering at UC San Diego is interested in “learning predictive measures of a student’s merit and likelihood to succeed in the program” (Kent, McCarthy, 2016) just as other leading institutions. It is committed to the diversity aims of the NIH that include increasing underrepresented students, women, and individuals with disabilities or disadvantaged backgrounds, and access to higher education.

Outcomes from the 2022 admission review resulted in a higher admission rate from 31% to 34% for underrepresented students even though the admission pool saw a decrease of 18 applications. The acceptance rate also increased from 35% to 37%. Learned from this last review, is need to continue a focused effort on increasing a diverse pool of applicants. Another goal for this year, is to realign Department effort that will increase it's active recruitment at major meetings to attract underrepresented students, disabled and/or underserved with the aim of increasing the applicant pool. In addition, the Diversity Council proposes to track outcomes of the entering cohort against peers, to identify any barriers and risks associated with retention and how best to support students.

BE EDI COMMITTEE

Jeff Hasty, Ph.D.

Francisco Contijoch, Ph.D.

Irene Hom

Carol King

BE EDI | WEBSITE

BE EDI | RESOURCES

To build a sense of community within our organization, we have been hosting on campus social events, such as picnics, study sessions, and game nights and recruiting at the graduate student organization fair. Next year, we are planning several new initiatives to further expand our member base and better prepare our members for future gender-relevant challenges.

We have created a mentorship program called Big Sis-Little Sis Mentorship Program that matches a UC San Diego undergraduate student to a UC San Diego graduate student to provide guidance in navigating academics in college and beyond. To incentivize mentor-mentee participation, we created a point system rewarding mentor-mentee pairs that meet individually once a month and also attend GMBE events. We further host monthly mentorship activities such as a workshop on how to get the most out of the Big Sis-Little Sis program and a tote bag painting event.

In terms of professional development, we hosted a series of career-focused workshops in collaborations with BEGS, including mock PhD program interviews for undergraduate students applying to graduate school. To increase professional opportunities for women and our members, we started a new tradition: Gender Minorities in Bioengineering Networking Night. In this event we gathered 100 graduate students, undergraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, faculty, and professionals from local companies to build connections and bridge UC San Diego students into the next stage of their careers. Networking Night consisted of games, booths hosted by our corporate sponsors, and a keynote speech delivered by Dr. Mary Canady, founder of Biotechnology Networks.

Additionally, in an effort to inspire youthful girls to pursue bioengineering careers we have built a collaboration with the Girl Scouts of San Diego to allow us to bring local girl scout troops on tours of UC San Diego labs followed by extra educational material. This year we toured 3 labs in the Sanford Consortium and gave a talk on how to start preparing for college.

Applications to our project teams are in Fall, and over the rest of the academic year these teams work on researching, prototyping, and testing their ideas in preparation for a submission to the international Engineering World Health Design Competition. The projects teach students both engineering skills ranging from 3D printing to building websites, and also give students a chance to learn about the realities of designing technology for different cultures and knowledge levels. To give you a sense of what these teams are like, we’d like to present you Inside Engineering World Health.

Anesthesia Vaporizer

This project aims to address the inadequate resources to provide anesthesia to people in low-resource communities. Normal anesthesia vaporizers rely on compressed gas and electricity which are difficult to obtain in these settings. They are also prone to breaking due to fluctuations in energy grids, as well as due to a lack of knowledge on how to maintain these machines. Our idea on how to address this issue is to create a low-cost drawover vaporizer. Drawover anesthesia vaporizers operate on the patient’s breathing instead of relying on compressed gas containers. These low powered vaporizers can be made with a heating device and a chamber to contain the anesthesia as it goes through its phase transition. A breathing circuit and values will be designed and built along with the machine.

External Fixation

With an increase in urbanization and use of motor vehicles in low resource communities, this project aims to address the spike in the number of bone fractures caused by road accidents. In particular, tibia fractures are particularly common. When these injuries are left untreated, conditions rapidly deteriorate and the possibility of making a fullBEN | 36 recovery soon vanishes. There are two common treatment methods: internal fixation of the bone, and conservative treatment using traction tables and splints/casts. The implants required for internal fixation are often only available piecemeal, and doctors are often over-eager to jump into such a surgery. Conservative treatments are meanwhile left to people unqualified to perform them as they are viewed as simple. Due to poor infrastructure and hygiene conditions, minimizing the trauma of surgery is essential to the quality of treatment.

External fixation provides an alternative to internal fixation—it is relatively safe, minimally invasive, and often provides better end results.

Low Cost Sterilizer

This project aims to address how in surgery, infection control is a challenge. Hospitals in low-resource communities lack adequate decontamination and sterilization equipment, particularly autoclaves. Additionally, a lack of understanding of proper disinfection protocols often contributes to contaminated surgical equipment and greater risk of infection for patients. Our idea on how to address this is a low-cost steam autoclave. This can allow for effective sterilization of equipment in a clinic or hospital setting. Our device can be made with a modified pressure cooker or similar equipment, and it can utilize temperature or pressure sensors to ensure proper sterilization. The design aims to be portable and simple-to-use.

Thyroid Symptom Checker

Our final project is in partnership with another student-organization here at UCSD, Project RISHI. In the village of Vemavaram, India, iodine deficiency, excess salt and oil in foods, and high concentrations of fluoride in drinking water are believed to be causes of thyroid disease. These conditions can lead to hypothyroidism, which is linked to obesity, fertility issues, joint pains, and cardiovascular disease. Current treatments typically involve hormone therapies that require regular monitoring. However, lacking regular access to medical professionals, villagers in Vemavaram must travel to the city of Chilakaluripet to visit a doctor. Our symptom monitoring web application would allow new users to log their symptoms and gain insight into a potential diagnosis, provide links to educational resources, or to help gauge the need to visit a medical professional. The software would also provide patients currently being treated for thyroid disease with a way to monitor their symptoms without the need to make the trek to the nearest health care center.

In order to accomplish this, they had to learn how to code using the R language, how to do tissue staining and how to use microscopes to find infarcted areas of heart tissue.

“I learned so much. I’ve enjoyed every day I’m here. This is like a dream for me to be here,” said Azcanio Muro. She said the experience helped her solidify her desire to pursue graduate school.

“I know that I want to do a Ph.D. and I want to do research,” Muro said. “Before this program, I was like hmm…, do I want to be a researcher or work in industry? I didn’t know. But now I do know that I want to be a researcher and I want to do a Ph.D. because I really enjoyed being in the lab, doing research. It might be stressful, but I like it. I like this type of life.”

Her research partner, Gandarilla, participated in ENLACE as a high school student in 2019, and found the program so valuable she decided to return, this time also serving as a chaperone to current high school participants. Her experience in 2019 helped her decide to pursue a degree in engineering. This year, her time in the lab, working to develop therapeutics that will one day benefit patients, has yet again opened doors.

“I feel like this experience has opened up so many different routes and opportunities I could potentially take,” Gandarilla said. “All of them are really great, but I'm still deciding on which one would be best for me. In our grad school prep session this past week, Dr. Graeve was helping me explore potential MD/PhD programs and the scholarships I can take to potentially get there, so we’ll see; that’s an option.”

For high school students Isabel Watson from Moreno Valley, Calif., and Angelina García Martínez from Monterrey, Mexico, part of the excitement has been learning what it’s like to be on a college campus, and getting their first experience in a research lab. The pair worked with Alexis Komor and Neal Devaraj, both professors in the UC San Diego Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, to isolate and verify two fluorescent cells. The duo learned how to prepare cells for expression and purification, and how to perform transfections.

“I thought it wasn't going to be so professional,” Garcia Martinez said. “I was kind of shocked to be working with actual Ph.D students., and I'm only a high school student; I’ve learned so much.”

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