Hello! My name is Kaitlyn Heintzelman, and I am a rising junior at Rice University. I am a Bioengineering and Biochemistry & Cell Biology major on the Premed track, minoring in Global Health Technologies.

This past week has been a fantastic start to this internship, and I’m really excited about what the coming weeks will bring!

I feel like the components of this internship that I am looking most forward to are the opportunity to engage with teammates in an in-person manner to develop a solution, as well as the opportunity to gain some technical knowledge that will assist me in my future coursework. In this regard, I am particularly excited about the opportunity to participate in the in-person version of this internship, as I feel like a lot of emphasis is put on both of the aforementioned areas.

As far as my project is concerned, I will be working alongside teammates Rachel, Samuel, and Christopher, as well as our TAs, Christian and Andrew, in the development of a heart and lung motion model. Through its modeling of the cumulative motion of the heart and lungs, this model will allow for the testing of, among other devices and techniques, a wirelessly powered pacemaker when it is being powered from a transmitter. This past Friday, we had the opportunity to visit our clients and tour their laboratory at the Texas Heart Institute. It was really cool to see the current model of the device in motion, and this experience really helped our team gain a better understanding of our project aims. Moreover, my team will be working on the development of a submersible version of this heart and lung motion model that will interface directly with the tissue samples. Overall, this project seems like it will be able to help me develop some technical skills that I do not have much experience with, such as 3D printing, while also allowing me to further grow in other areas that I do, such as coding and circuits. I really look forward to further developing this device over the course of the internship and the opportunity to collaborate with our clients to gain valuable feedback.

Following our initial client interview, my team and I have set out to further understand the needs and requirements of the model by researching models with similar aims, as well as into the mechanics behind normal heart and lung motion. Overall, this was a great first week, and I can’t wait to see what the future will hold.

Signing off,

Kaitlyn