My trajectory toward a Bioengineer began when I started dancing Ballet, Jazz and Modern Dance performing in recitals such as The Nutcracker, Giselle, Dracula, and Don Quixote. Dancers are in need of rehabilitation since they experience broken bones, ripped muscle or a sprain due to lack of rest, malnutrition, or incorrect body placement. I personally experienced this when I sprained my ankle and broke my toe. Because of this, I felt a need to help the rehabilitation community. Consequently, I partake in many outreach and community service activities that give back to the community, especially to minorities who desire to enter the STEM field. Therefore, I developed my personal and professional goals: to inspire the future generation with the creative thinking and love of engineering towards the goal of inventing neural engineering systems for rehabilitation. To
accomplish this I must study the human interaction, human-stimuli and human connectivity. To accomplish my goal, I worked in the Department of Energy launching a Lunch and Learn Brown Bag Program and a mentoring program. Then I worked for two summers at NASA Langley with biomedical engineers and psychologists to understand and predict a pilot’s mental state such as surprised, distraction and focus in a plane simulator. To complete the trifecta, I joined the Sensorimotor Integration Lab, studying the neural connectivity by studying how humans adapt their visual and motor responses while performing a repetitive task using a robot. It is important to understand this phenomenon since neurons are the messengers in the body. If the message is not transported properly, it causes issues in human productivity and efficiency. In my project, I recruit students to use a robotic arm to hit a target. If they perform the movement correctly, they are rewarded with visual and auditory feedback response. Once they are masters in the movement, they will be given certain obstacles thus adapting their movement. These manipulations will allow us to determine the relative influence of proprioception and vision on the amount of generalization. With all this in mind, I have learned that research takes time commitment. Likewise, I enjoy the research field. Therefore, in my next journey I will be going to graduate school to enhance my knowledge on ergonomic and human factor engineering principle.
