Blog #8 - Final Reflection

 Since I am planning on majoring in biomedical engineering, I wanted to do this project to get a feel and perspective on the biomedical engineering field. That’s why I liked having this opportunity to be outside of a classroom setting and more in a work environment. Overall, my project went well. I’ve learned a lot about MRI incubators, but I also learned some things about myself. I’ll admit, the first week wasn’t my favorite week since I did a lot of reading including two grant proposals Ravi has been working on and a forty-page packet for requirements for an incubator. The second week I started working on the trifold/poster and ran three heat-rise experiments on the incubator. That week was definitely more interesting and hands-on than the first week. In the past three weeks, I got to see one side of what it is like to be a biomedical engineer. I learned that a standard incubator takes 45 minutes to an hour to prewarm which is too long especially during emergencies. Current incubators are also expensive and high maintenance, making them available mainly to research hospitals. 

The advice I would give about planning a Hawken Project is if you don’t have any idea who you want your mentor to be, a good start is emailing Hawken Alumni, alumni@hawken.edu because there is a good chance that someone works in the field or is similar to the field you are interested in. A big takeaway from my project is that you aren’t always going to love what you are doing at that moment, but there’s usually a reason why what you are doing. For me, I didn’t love reading a forty-page packet, but it taught me a lot about the specific requirements the incubator needed and allowed me to see if the heat-rise experiment results met those requirements. Again, I would like to thank Ravi and Jose for allowing me to come and learn about what they do every day and how they make an impact on the world, specifically on infants and people in the medical field such as doctors and nurses. I would also like to thank the Hawken Project proctors especially Dr. Hagen for supporting me throughout my three-week experience by checking in and answering any questions I had along the way.