Undergraduate student research spotlights

Dannica Donahue

Biomedical Engineering, Senior
Institute for Engineering in Medicine

"I've really enjoyed my time in the Physician Inspired Engineering Solutions Directed Research Program. I’ve worked with anesthesiologists at the U of M Medical Center and collaborated with other students to design, create, and test an Apple Watch app that monitors a patient’s vitals and gives vibration alarms to anesthesiologists while they are performing tasks."

Tanmay Agarwal

B.S. Computer Science '21
Junaed Sattar's lab

"I was a part of Profesor Junaed Sattar's Interactive Robots and Vision Lab, where I was surrounded by brilliant, kind, and creative people. The experience made me realize how innovative research can truly be. Academia and research allow you to explore new fields and be continuously innovative in your work, and that's something that I personally find really motivating."

Akshay Naik

Computer Engineering, Senior
Roger Rusack's Lab

"My first research experience with aerospace professor James Flaten propelled me into doing research with MIT over a summer, where I worked on a Moxie device for the Perseverance Rover on Mars. Then, I started doing research for another lab in the U of M physics department that’s associated with CERN, a Europe-based particle physics organization. All of these experiences made me realize that research is something I really want to pursue in my future career."

Michelle Quan

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Senior
Michelle Calabrese Group

"My research focuses on nanoparticle synthesis. Eventually, we're going to put them into composite materials, for example, a plastic with little nanoparticles in it that can enhance the material’s properties. I hope to eventually become a faculty member, and maybe come back to teach at an institution like the U of M. My principal investigator is a woman, and that was really valuable for me to have someone who can empathize with what goes on when you are underrepresented in your field."

Sarah Tanck

Chemical Engineering, Senior
Mark Distefano's Lab

"Research was something I wanted to do in high school but I never really had the resources to. I talked to a lot of professors, and eventually I found one who offered me a position in a lab. I really love learning things. There’s a lot of gray space in research, but you get to walk into that and make sense of things, and put it together like a puzzle."

Adam Boeckermann

Biomedical Engineering, Junior
German Academic Exchange summer research internship

"My research at the University of Tubingen was in PET tracer development. PET, or positron emission tomography, is an imaging technology that’s used to see what’s going on in the body, similar to MRIs. The more research I do, the more I like it, and the summer I spent in Germany definitely showed me that research is a huge interest of mine."