Do you remember what was happening in your life roughly eleven years ago? What changes were occurring or not occurring? I know where I was. I was being sat down and told by doctors that they could fix my eyesight. As an eight-year-old, I was put through a multitude of tests, being poked and prodded to be hopefully treated. However, I still woke up each day to find the world around me becoming slightly blurrier. At a time when kids were encouraged to make friends and discover more about the world, I was ostracized due to bulky machinery, so I could see. Yet I didn’t just face the stares of my peers but also the words of teachers, friends, and relatives who insisted I could see because I looked fine or I looked normal. Which translated to I was faking it and I didn't really need extra help. This was the harsh reality I faced as an eight-year-old child. But I also learned that if I had let the stares and words stop me, I would never be able to flourish. So, I continued to try to find new tools to be able to advance, and I learned never to stop speaking up. I’m so thankful I did. Although I still struggle with an unfixable blurry world, I know that I'm going to be a part of the change. I started to prove to others that, yet I can see it doesn’t stop me from wrestling without any correction. I served as a JV, Girls, and Team captain for that team and won multiple titles only seeing a blurry outline of my opponent. As I came closer to my college career, I wanted to make tools for people who face the same feeling of desperation. The tools I found provided me with a hold back on my life when I was a child, drifting in confusion and loss. I’m at Michigan Tech, studying Biomedical Engineering. One of my dreams with my degree is to create an alternative nerve for people who have had nerve damage. I want to provide people with an opportunity to regain control of something they have lost. As a child, I wished to be able to regain some semblance of control. So, if I can provide people with control, may it be from an artificial nerve, a tool, or just my story I have succeeded. As Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded.”

They say that death is when you truly lose someone. However, I beg to differ. My grandfather was diagnosed with severe dementia five years before his eventual passing. I was eight years old when my grandfather's mind became hazy. In the beginning, he just forgot the name of the street or where they were going. But as the days and years pass by, it seems that his memory passed with it. My grandfather, Grandpa Tony, served his country in Korea. He spoke fluent Japanese and loved to tell you stories. Sadly, those stories became less. He no longer could recall the difference between Japanese and English, and he didn't remember where he was, in Korea or the US. It was heartbreaking to see my grandfather become a shell of who he once was. Yet, it was excruciating when he no longer remembered he had a granddaughter. I was eleven years old when my grandfather forgot my multiple birthday parties, accomplishments, and my name. It was a hurdle to push myself to come to see him again, as much as I wanted to be there for him and support him. It was hard to be asked if I was a volunteer. Watching him look at me and, in his eyes, have no recognition of who I was. It took a week, but I did continue to go. I decided that I would create new memorable moments that week. So, I hosted volunteer events at his nursing home, having a caroling session during Christmas. I brought him toy cars on his birthday and told him about my accomplishments in wrestling. All the things we used to talk about when he remembered. When I was thirteen, during my wrestling practice, his third stroke took his life. I was devastated to have lost my grandpa. But as time has passed, I've strangely become thankful. Dementia had taken my Grandpa years before the stroke took his body. We all tried to hold on to him in the hope of treating the incurable. Instead of a cure, he became a shell of a man when he passed. I look back on those years, and I'm thankful to have those memories with him. I'm glad that there were people around him. However, I came to learn that there are many people who have Dementia and Alzheimer's who rarely receive visitors as it's too hard for loved ones to see them. So I decided to volunteer at Lutheran Nursing Home in the Dementia and Alzheimer's wing to be there for residents who don’t see the ones they have forgotten. Volunteering gave me a sense of closure and resolve I needed after the passing of my grandpa. It gave me insight into the frustrations my grandpa faced as he slowly had a part of himself forgotten. It gave me the determination to try to change others' experiences. I started by creating and leading donation drives, from gathering flowers for residents to creating a card and small gifts drive for Valentine's Day, all in the hopes of bringing joy to residents. As I have grown, so has my aspiration to help. I hope to become a Biomedical Engineer at Michigan Technological University to try to change people's experience with what is deemed incurable. I don’t know if I will be able to cure Dementia, but I hope to provide hope where it is needed. I hope to share my story so more people don’t stop fighting and allow the ones they love to become a shell of who they are. I hope to inspire people to take advantage of their time with them while they can. I believe in the ideology of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded.”

I began the journey into pursuing the Biomedical field due to an ideology best described by a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded.” This quote inspired my research into the medical field, where I discovered it wasn’t just limited to doctors and nurses. Rather, it is a dynamic system that requires human intervention and technological support to combat the plague of medical unknowns. As a person who faces one of these medical unknowns, finding a degree that could help not only myself but others as well seemed like the perfect fit. With my degree, I'm not just helping build bridges. I'm helping design something to better someone else's life. As I remember when I was eight years old, doctors looked at me with confusion splayed on their faces, telling me they were unsure why my vision was rapidly deteriorating. However, this didn’t stop me from growing and overcoming this unknown. Yet, there are many who are unable to do so. I hope to be able to play a part in designing ways to shed light on the unknown and tools to overcome them as well. While at Michigan Technological University, I have had the opportunity to engage in challenging coursework that has strengthened my foundational knowledge and provided me with practical applications relevant to my major. Through various assignments and projects, I have been constantly challenged to think creatively and develop innovative ways to improve effectiveness, accessibility, and quality in different fields. Recently, my team and I were given a challenge to design a prosthetic that would cater to our chosen target audience. We decided to create a below-the-knee prosthetic that focuses on modularity and comfort for athletes. I was one of the leading advocates for this idea because I used to be a high school state wrestler and water polo player. I can only imagine how difficult it would be not to be able to participate in these sports or to try and do so with a prosthetic while in pain. I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead my team throughout the design process and see ideas combined to form our prototype. Moreover, our group was selected to showcase our design and prototype at the Senior Design Expo held by our university. We are ecstatic that our design will be shared with others and allow amputees to remain athletic. Yet, this is only a fraction of what I hope to achieve. I want to learn more about nerve regeneration and substation. In my experience, the nerves are an untapped field that holds many unknowns. I want to be someone who can work to improve at least one person's life, whether through prosthetics or improving nerve damage.

The technology I find most inspirational technology to me is the human body. From an early age, I was surrounded by the medical field due to sick relatives. Due to the immersion, I learned the wonders of the organisms and technology within our body. However, there’s always improvement to be made with technology. The same goes for the human body. Yet before we can make improvements, I think we first must understand and learn from what we are improving. So, I hope the innovators of the next generation of the world can come in and be inspired by the human body's resourcefulness. And use that as inspiration not just to help the medical field but also fields such as electrical engineering, as our brains can easily be compared to how a computer functions. I believe we have much to learn and grow, and taking inspiration and knowledge from what is lying in plain sight is a great start. However, to make the world a better place, I believe you must first start with one person. One of my ideas is to design a technology that can be used as a substitute for a nerve that has been damaged. As there are sadly, many cases of people who have severe nerve damage will have had their limb removed due to atrophy or infection. Many amputees wish they had an opportunity to save the limb. It’s disheartening to see a perfectly healthy limb become useless, because our brain can’t communicate with it. So, if this device is successful, In some cases, it could provide people with the ability to gain back the function of a limb that was previously lost. This innovation might not change the world, but in my mind, transforming one person’s life makes the world a better place.