Undergraduate Student Profiles
 | Elizabeth Spencer Oswald Current Position: Columbia BME PhD student Advisors: Dr. Clark Hung, Dr. Gerard Ateshian, Dr. Chloe Bulinski (Biology) Columbia BME: B.S. May 2004 Columbia BME: M.S. February 2006
I chose to major in Biomedical Engineering as undergraduate because of the challenging and diverse course load the major required, and because the department offered many opportunities for undergraduates to participate in extracurricular research. As a sophomore, I began working with graduate students in the laboratory of Dr. Clark Hung, where my projects included creation of tissue engineered cartilage constructs and chondrogenic differentiation of bone-derived mesenchymal stem cells. In the summer after junior year, I had the opportunity to present our work at the ASME Summer Bioengineering Conference. Inspired by my experiences in the laboratory, and full of unanswered research questions, I decided to pursue a graduate degree in Biomedical Engineering. In my senior year I applied for and received a National Science Foundation fellowship, and was also awarded the Columbia Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science Presidential Fellowship. I chose to remain at Columbia for my graduate work for a number of reasons. First, since I have been a student in the department, we have acquired many new professors whose diverse research backgrounds provide many new collaboration opportunities. These professors are also dedicated teachers who have developed new curricula that reflect their areas of expertise and compliment the core classes offered by the department. Second, I have found that Columbia’s BME Department is very receptive to student input and supportive of student-led initiatives, such as the Annual Graduate Student Conference. Finally, the Department’s location within Columbia University and the city of New York lends itself to a multitude of interactions with researchers from around the world and with and professionals from fields beyond science and engineering, helping students understand the broader applications of their research and the role of scientists within society. |