The thing that motivates me the most is knowing that what I help create will one day end up inside someone – making their life better. As a BME, we have an innate feel to improve patient care through physical products or research.

However, on a more direct level, I am really motivated by the satisfaction of fixing issues. In one of my previous internships, I got involved in some product design work for patient-specific instruments. I went through several iterations of designs and prototype. The best feeling was learning from my mistakes and overcoming this challenge to recreate the part based on what I learned. I think that learning something different really changes my perspective on a design/process and gets me more excited to complete my work. To give you an example, after my first iteration, I took the prototype to my manager who looked at it and said “xyz will have an affect of abc – so we need to change that”. And so I went back to the drawing board trying to make this product per the patient’s needs. Each time, the issue was different and I had to come up with different methods to solve the issues. I had a great time with that project.