I am a Medical Device Engineer for Cornerstone Medical, a surgical robotics startup in Greater Boston focused on laparoscopic surgery. I graduated from Johns Hopkins University in May of 2019 with a bachelor’s of science in mechanical engineering.

I have always been interested in motion. As a young kid, my favorite thing to do was build marble tracks around my house. Something about guiding the marbles through turns, loops, and jumps captivated my 5-year-old mind. I soon graduated to LEGOs, which was something I enjoyed every day for the majority of my childhood.

When I moved from North Brunswick, New Jersey to Upstate New York in middle school, my fascinations with motion and building came to fruition when I joined my school’s science olympiad team. On this team, I participated in engineering competitions and built 5 Rube Goldberg machines, 3 vehicles, and an array of other devices. I was fortunate enough to go to the national competition for each of the six years of my science olympiad career, exposing me to different designs and solutions from around the country. During my senior year of high school, I served as captain and led the team to a 7th place overall finish at nationals.

I attended Johns Hopkins University from 2015-2019; it was here when my passion for medical devices took shape. I realized that I could use my time and thinking to better the lives of others, all the while challenging and engaging myself with technical problems. My most noteworthy experience is working under Dr. Ashish Nimgaonkar in a quest to create a novel shunting device for the treatment of refractory ascites. The nature of this work afforded me with skills in prototyping and manufacturing, and also allowed me to collaborate directly with doctors and surgeons to understand their clinical needs. My work culminated in an in-vivo porcine study in which I was able to actively participate in the implantation.

During the summer of 2018, I interned at Medtronic in Woburn, MA with its gynecological group. Here, I devised test methods and fixtures and, most notably, developed novel testing equipment for evaluating operative fluid visualization. After I graduated in May 2019, I returned to Medtronic as a full time R&D Engineer and worked on new tissue resection devices for gynecological procedures. At Cornerstone Medical, I am developing a port access system and advanced surgical instruments for robotic laparoscopy. My job experiences have given me the necessary background and ambition to contribute significantly to the medical device field.

I have played soccer all of my life and continue to do so in my free time. I also picked up skateboarding a couple of years ago, and my favorite thing to do is explore an area on a set of wheels. Cruising along with the pavement and weaving through crowds of people makes me feel like a kid all over again.