Professional Development

Katie Haddad recently completed her year as a 2024-25 Business Development Fellow with the Mike and Renée Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Katie shares, "The Business Development Fellowship was a valuable part of my graduate school experience, giving me the skills to translate scientific innovation into real-world impact.

Last week 5 of our outstanding alumni returned (virtually) to share their career journeys with current BMEGG students. We are grateful for their investment in the continued success of the BMEGG program and students.

The BMEGG has two excellent finalists in the annual UC Davis Grad Slam competition. Congratulations to Rajul Bains and Roshni Shetty!

Rajul Bains
Master's student, Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group
"Microfluidic Tumor-on-a-Chip Model for Cancer Research"

Thank you to everyone who attended, presented, judged, and participated in the BMEGG Student Research Symposium on May 12. I would especially like to thank Christal Wintersmith, Sophie Orr, and Ben Mattison for all of their hard work organizing this event. All of the sessions were excellent, and the “BME IN SPACE!” panel was a lot of fun.

Congratulations to the winners of the Best Oral, Poster, and SciCom Video Awards:

Leora Goldbloom-Helzner, BME Ph.D. Candidate under the mentorship of Professor Aijun Wang, and Abby Niesen, BME Ph.D. Candidate under the mentorship of Professor Maury Hull, were recently selected as fellows of the UC Davis Professors for the Future Program for 2022-2023. 

This competitive program provides outstanding Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars with  leadership-development opportunities and a $3000 stipend. The 2022-2023 cohort will engage in the following activities:

Nkechinyere Chidi-Ogbolu, Ph.D. Candidate in BMEGG, recently completed her term as a member of the Chancellor’s Graduate & Professional Student Advisory Board. Nkechi shares, “The board as a whole forms subcommittees to tackle different issues faced by graduate students on campus. Those issue then get related back to the Chancellor and with our suggested solutions. We get feedback from the Chancellor on the most feasible options and then start to work on implementation.

UC Davis BMEGG Ph.D. Students Brent Weyers, Amy Becker, Oybek Kholiqov, Justin Migacz, and Xiangnan Zhou journeyed with UC Davis colleagues to Jena, Germany to participate in a Summer School on Clinical Biophotonics.  The trip was funded under a grant that Dr. Laura Marcu and Dr. Juergen Popp (Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology) co-wrote to promote collaboration in clinical biophotonics between UC Davis and the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology.

Dovin Kiernan, BME Ph.D. Student under the mentorship of Professor David Hawkins, was recently accepted into the UC Davis Professors for the Future Program for 2018-2019. 

The Professors for the Future program enhances graduate education and postdoctoral training in several ways:

Congratulations to Robin Cumming (Sutcliffe Lab) for her selection at the  UC Davis representative for the AAAS Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering workshop in Washington DC. Robin will attend a two-day workshop and then talk to members of Congress to advocate for the UC Davis and science and engineering research, hopefully convincing our legislature to increase funding research. 

Congratulations to Chris Chapman (Seker Lab) for being selected to participate in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in summer 2015 in Lindau, Germany. Chris will represent UC Davis and enjoy the opportunity to engage 70 Nobel Laureates and network internationally with 650 other young researchers attending the meeting.