Week 5 - Marie

I spent the majority of my time this week working on my research project and preparing a presentation on MRI characterization of thrombus age for a lab meeting. The research group is interested in using MRI to determine thrombus age, as thrombus age cannot currently be determined by any non-invasive imaging techniques. However, thrombus age is an important factor in patient survival, so MRI determination of thrombus age would provide a valuable contribution to current clinical practice.

On Monday I also shadowed Dr. Divya Gupta in the gynecologic oncology clinic. The gynecologic oncology clinic serves low-income and Medicaid patients that, due to fiscal organization, cannot be served at NY-Presbyterian. Many of these patients are followed at the clinic but referred to city hospitals for treatment. It was interesting to see a variety of gynecological cancers (ovarian, uterine, cervial, etc.) as well as BRCA1/2+ patients being followed prior to the development of cancer. Also, most of the patients were non-native English speakers, which added to the challenge of providing clear care. I will be shadowing Dr. Gupta again this upcoming Monday.

I also spent a portion of this week at networking and social events. On Wednesday evening our BME group met with some of the attendees of a HHMI conference on similar medical immersion programs. We were able to discuss our research, our summer projects, and how this summer experience has shaped our view of medicine and biomedical engineering. Earlier this week, I also attended the Whitaker International Program meeting, which was conveniently located in Manhattan. The Whitaker International Program is a organization that funds biomedical engineers to conduct coursework, internships, or research abroad; I was a Whitaker Fellow to Switzerland in 2011-2012. This meeting was an opportunity to reconnect with some of my colleagues from that program and to establish new connections between other BME graduate students and post-docs from around the country.