At the 2019 Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference (NEBEC), held at Rutgers University on March 20-22, BME PhD student, Bryan Choate, won the 2nd Place Graduate Poster Award for his research with Professor Karen Troy on developing methods to validate a subject-specific magnetic resonance based finite element model to predict strain in the femur. The NEBEC brings together undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, professors, and industry leaders from the world on bioengineering. The conference included presentations about assistive devices, regenerative medicine, imaging, microfluidics, cancer studies, and tissue engineering. At the poster session, Bryan enjoyed explaining his work on developing a safe technique for estimating bone strength in adolescents and ultimately contributing to research on osteoporosis prevention.
Prior to starting his PhD at WPI, Bryan spent five years as a professional engineer where he transitioned across multiple medical device companies and more specifically departments (i.e. sustaining, quality, and research and development), to learn about the many facets of engineering and angles of new product development. During that time, he also worked as a science education writer for the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), where he gained valuable writing experience creating accessible scientific educational videos based upon complex science and engineering topics.