Student/Post-doc News

Meha Pandy Attends Summit at Duke University

Meha Pandey, a BME junior, represented U-M BME at the 2009 Summit on the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges hosted at Duke University.

The purpose of the two-day Summit was to motivate student interest in engineering and science, and to address the importance of the collaboration between the fields of engineering, law, and public policy. The Summit focused on how to achieve the NAE's Grand Challenges by dividing the discussion into several main areas, with speakers and panels on energy and the environment, health, entrepreneurship, security, and understanding the brain. Specific Grand Challenges include providing access to clean drinking water, engineering better medicines, and securing cyberspace. The conference provided great breadth and depth on relevant issues such as these for future engineers to look towards.

Meha had the opportunity to hear and interact with notable speakers making advances in the field of medicine, including Robert Langer, Bill Hawkins (Medtronic CEO), and Anna Barker (deputy director of the National Cancer Institute). She learned about the challenges of medical innovation, including policy-related issues that affect the development of new technology.

Last summer Meha had participated in the Duke-Engineering World Health program in Central America, where she trained hospital technicians in Honduras to fix medical equipment. At the Summit, she asked the Entrepreneurship Panel about the best way to motivate leaders and companies to work on researching medical equipment technology geared towards the developing world.

Posted on May 13, 2009, 1:26 pm