{"id":73992,"date":"2018-05-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/commencement-2018-internships-research-projects-point-uri-student-toward-career-in-bioastronautics-medical-engineering\/"},"modified":"2018-05-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T00:00:00","slug":"commencement-2018-internships-research-projects-point-uri-student-toward-career-in-bioastronautics-medical-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2018\/05\/commencement-2018-internships-research-projects-point-uri-student-toward-career-in-bioastronautics-medical-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2018: Internships, research projects point 溏心vlog免费B站 student toward career in bioastronautics, medical engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 11, 2018 \u2013 Exeter<\/strong> resident Rachel Bellisle took advantage of every opportunity that came her way during her four years at the 溏心vlog免费B站, from playing oboe in the Symphonic Wind Ensemble to working in laboratories and participating in internships. Now she is pondering a career tied to the cosmos.<\/p>\n

As she looks toward graduation on May 20, she is also looking forward to enrolling at the prestigious and highly-competitive Health Sciences and Technology graduate program of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she will study the emerging disciplines of bioastronautics and medical engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved my time at 溏心vlog免费B站,\u201d said Bellisle, a biomedical engineering major with a minor in business. \u201cIt opened up a lot of opportunities for me, and I\u2019m incredibly grateful for those opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bellisle pursued a degree in engineering in part because her father is an engineer. \u201cHe\u2019s a civil engineer, but I chose biomedical because I\u2019m interested in the medical field in combination with engineering. I also wasn\u2019t sure I could ever be a doctor because I\u2019m not good around blood,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long after starting her college career before Bellisle delved into biomedical engineering research. As a sophomore, she worked in Professor Walt Besio\u2019s Neuro Rehabilitation Laboratory studying an electrode Besio invented to better understand brain signals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were seeing a slow wave frequency in the electrode signals and he didn\u2019t know where it came from,\u201d Bellisle said. \u201cI did some experiments to see if it came from microsaccades, the tiny movements in our eyes that happen when we fixate on something.\u201d The results of her research were presented at the International Engineering in Medicine and Biology conference in South Korea in 2017.<\/p>\n

That summer she enjoyed her first internship experience working in the production, quality and logistics department at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport. She followed that up with an internship last summer at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., where she worked at the world\u2019s largest research hospital. She analyzed the results of tests of an exoskeleton developed to help children with cerebral palsy improve their walking ability.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome kids with cerebral palsy have a gait disorder where their knees are more flexed than usual, so the exoskeleton helps them extend their knees to promote a more efficient walking pattern,\u201d Bellisle said. \u201cIt was in the early stages of testing, but eventually they hope to use it as a rehabilitation device. The purpose of the device is to train the user to not need the device.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience of living with 16 other interns from around the country and working in this prestigious facility was inspiring to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a game changer for me,\u201d she said. \u201cI went into it not knowing quite what I wanted to do after graduation, and throughout the course of the internship I discovered exactly what I wanted to do and found I was ready to go to grad school.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Bellisle\u2019s most treasured experiences at 溏心vlog免费B站 was her involvement in the 溏心vlog免费B站 chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, which provided professional development opportunities and allowed her to attend national conferences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really enjoyed being involved in the 溏心vlog免费B站 engineering community,\u201d she said. \u201cWithout a doubt I wouldn\u2019t have been as successful without my involvement in those groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bellisle earned numerous awards for her academic excellence during her four years at 溏心vlog免费B站, including membership in the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, which led to a national fellowship from the society. The most notable award, however, was one she didn\u2019t even win. She earned honorable mention in the Goldwater Scholarship program, the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship for students studying math, science and engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I didn\u2019t win, the process of applying and interviewing for it really helped me,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t applied, I wouldn\u2019t have been as prepared to apply for the NIH internship and other programs. It really made me think about what I wanted to do with my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those other programs she applied for was the Harvard-MIT graduate program in Health Sciences and Technology, one of the oldest and largest biomedical engineering and physician-scientist training programs in the country. She was accepted as a doctoral student in the program\u2019s Medical Engineering and Medical Physics program, one of just 25 students accepted each year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point of the program is to choose a standard engineering discipline and apply it to the medical field,\u201d Bellisle said. \u201cWe also get to take pre-clinical courses with medical students to get the perspective of someone in the clinical field and understand the implications of our work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program will allow her to pursue her interests in neuro-engineering, biomechanics and assistive devices, like the exoskeleton she studied in Maryland. She was also one of just two students accepted into the program\u2019s Bioastronautics Training Program, where she will study the effects of space flight on the human body.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still not positive that bioastronautics is the direction I\u2019m going to go with my career, but it\u2019s something I want to explore,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very specific field, but the applications are amazing. It\u2019s an area that I\u2019ve always been interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her entire five- to seven-year graduate program has been funded by a fellowship from Draper Laboratories.<\/p>\n

Where does Bellisle see herself in the future? She\u2019s not certain yet, but probably working in the biomedical industry or at a start-up company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough the fellowship with Draper, I might end up working there or at another research institute,\u201d she said. \u201cI definitely want to stick with doing research, and I might end up in academia, because I like teaching. But things could change a lot between now and then.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 11, 2018 \u2013 Exeter resident Rachel Bellisle took advantage of every opportunity that came her way during her four years at the 溏心vlog免费B站, from playing oboe in the Symphonic Wind Ensemble to working in laboratories and participating in internships. Now she is pondering a career tied to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-73992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}