Ilsa Shobe: Future doctor, Olympic hopeful, CSE student
Shobe is a senior majoring in biomedical engineering—inspired by her mother, who also attended CSE and graduated with a master's in biomedical engineering. She's doing classes and research remotely from Salt Lake City, Utah, where she too is training anywhere from 24-40 hours per week to be an Olympic speed skater.
December 27, 2021—Biomedical engineering student Ilsa Shobe is training for the 2026 Winter Olympics. As part of her undergraduate research, she is using physics to help the U.S. Speedskating team skate faster and more efficiently.
After she’s done skating at an elite level, Shobe plans to leverage her engineering talents and experience with academic research in medical school.
“The University of Minnesota’s biomedical engineering department is really one of the best in the nation,” she said. “With research, you learn a lot as you go. It’s really important to be able to learn on the fly and know how to fix things when they go wrong. I think that’s really great for any future career, whether it's in biomedical engineering or in medicine.”