From L to R: Madeleine Combs ’18, Prajwal Bharadwaj ’19, Sang-Sin Lee ’18 Photos courtesy of Combs, Bharadwaj and Lee
For the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), research is often carried out by undergraduate students who collaborate with faculty and PhD students. This year, three undergraduates are presenting their research at the 2017 BMES Annual Meeting to be held in Phoenix on October 11-14.
The outstanding students are Madeleine Combs ’18, Sang-Sin Lee ’18 and Prajwal Bharadwaj ’19. Each is listed as lead author on their respective posters.
Combs, a senior who sings in two choirs at USC, became involved with research in Professor Ellis Meng’s Biomedical Microsystems (BioMEMS) Laboratory and worked closely with PhD student Ahuva Weltman. Her research is titled “Immunohistological Image Analysis of Microprobe Array Targeting Hippocampus.”
On the opportunity to present, Combs was pleasantly surprised. She had planned to attend the conference but didn’t submit her research without encouragement from her peers in the USC chapter of Associated Students in Biomedical Engineeering (ASBME).
“I’m nervous and really excited about it,” Combs said. “I’m going to definitely learn more public speaking skills and that will be good because I haven’t done a lot of talking about my research in general. So, I’m going to learn how to phrase things in certain ways.”
Sang-Sin Lee, also a senior, is a tremendous fan of the band Muse and wishes to be as impactful in his research as their music is to his life. To shed his introverted nature and become more like his rock idols, Lee worked with Assistant Professor Keyue Shen to develop his research entitled “In Vitro Evaluation of Cancer Invasiveness with Microfluidic Layer-by-Layer Collagen Deposition.”
“What I would want to get out of this experience is knowing a wide variety of cutting-edge research and technologies in biomedical engineering,” Lee said. “I can find out what kind of specific area I would want to focus on in the future.”
What I would want to get out of this experience is knowing a wide variety of cutting-edge research and technologies in biomedical engineeringSang-Sin Lee
Bharadwaj, a junior from Bismarck, N.D. who is proudly CPR-certified, worked in Assistant Professor Eun Ji Chung’s lab for his research titled, “In Vitro Vascular Model for Atherosclerosis.”
“The overall goal of the research was to make a more accurate in-vitro model of atherosclerosis,” Bharadwaj said. “I will be able to communicate my research with others, and use their valuable feedback to further my own research and presentation skills.”
The BME department congratulates all students and faculty presenting at BMES 2017. Best of luck and Fight On!
Published on September 19th, 2017
Last updated on April 15th, 2022
