Bryan O. '07 | August 12, 2006
"To BE or not to BE"
When I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be a doctor.
The summer before my senior year of college, I wanted to be a doctor.
Are these two statements the same?
Nope.
So since I'm from the 80s, I can tell you that I was a Doogie Howser fan.
I used to want to save lives by performing surgeries and hold a defribillator in my hands and say "Clear!"
As a kid, I jumped around and had a tour of careers: judge, astronaut, movie star, video game designer...you get the gist.
And then in 6th grade at the state spelling bee, I mispelled the word prosthetics. (I still blame the man reading the words, but then, in retrospect the prize for first place was a set of encyclopedias. Then the internet became popular, so HA!)
I never really forgave myself for that day back in 1996, and it's probably a good thing. How else would I have learned about bioengineering?
Fast forward to MIT circa 2003.
Bryan arrives on campus.
I still danced around the major I wanted, AeroAstro, EECS, Biology, ChemE...aye so many choices.
Eventually I settled on Mechanical Engineering, and for me that was a good decision given what I could select from. I still wanted some biology in my life though, so I thought a while about double majoring in biology, but I decided against that one and went for the biomedical engineering minor instead.
Up until the middle of my sophomore year, I still wanted to go into medicine.
That's when I started to change my mind.
Having taken a lot of engineering classes by then and having a UROP in a bioengineering lab, I began to change my perspective on things. I really liked applying engineering concepts to biology, and I really didn't like the idea of just doing medicine. At this point, I just kind of knew I wanted to go into bioengineering. I wasn't positive about the PhD thing until about 3 weeks ago.
But I guess the question is can someone who studied mechanical engineering go into a bioengineering program? Simple answer: yes.
What particularly interests me about bioengineering is in the area of biomechanics and cellular fluid dynamics. I like thinking about how mechanical properties either those inherent to the cell or those in the local environment of the cell influence behavior. Biomechanics on different length scales is a very big aspect of bioengineering programs these days, so I'm safe. For me, it was a good decision to get a handle on the purely mechanical aspect of things before trying to apply those principles to biological systems because in biological systems, a lot of the phenomena has yet to be understood or quantified. These systems however are so complex that I'm pretty sure that while I like biomechanics that I won't be able to completely ignore all the other aspects such as signaling, kinetics, etc.
And why a PhD?
1. I still want the title of Dr.
2. I really want to be able to learn how to design a research project and see it through, and that is best accomplished in my opinion by getting a PhD.
So as I look on Facebook and see everyone who wants to go into bioengineering, it's not surprising. It's a really hot field in my opinion with a lot of unanswered questions. Just keep in mind that there are a lot of areas that you can go into and a bunch of ways to end up in the same place.
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Hey, you can still yell things like "Get me that file, STAT!"
Posted by: JKim on August 12, 2006 10:08 AM
Well I want to go into ME...so that's good to hear that you can choose a different course...but I'll probably stick to Mech. Eng. ;)
Posted by: Aziz '10 on August 12, 2006 03:40 PM
your story is ejactly!! like my story.
i wanna do medicine/engineering.
ANKIT CHANDRA
GABORONE, BOTSWANA
Posted by: Ankit Chandra on August 14, 2006 03:31 PM
Ahh, this reminds me of a question I've been harboring for a while:
I had heard that the majority of people who get PhDs in Engineering just go back and become a professor. Is that really true? Do you know what all people do once they get an engineering PhD?
Posted by: Kristin on August 15, 2006 02:06 PM
Hey Kristin,
A lot of the graduate students I work with are actually planning on going into industry at least for a little while before considering academia. These days, a PhD is required to become a professor, so it's natural that anyone who wants to become a professor will be seeking a PhD, but I think there is a large set of people who want PhD's to become better researchers. As far as what I want from an engineering PhD, right now I'd like to say I want to go into academia, but I also realize that I haven't even been accepted into grad school yet.
- Bryan
Posted by: Bryan on August 15, 2006 06:36 PM
