![\"Vanessa](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/11\/Vanessa-Kamara-364x514.jpg\")
\u201cI\u2019m a curious person,\u201d says biomedical engineering student Vanessa Kamara \u201921. \u201cI have lots of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dressed in ripped jeans and sporting a nose ring, with the tips of her dark hair dyed bright magenta, she sips iced coffee and talks about her work\u2014the kind of research she\u2019s interested in and why.<\/p>\n
She wants to find ways to improve healthcare by drawing inspiration from nature. \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in health care, and I want to learn how to make it better,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are so many things we don\u2019t know. I have textbooks that basically say, \u2018This is what this thing is called, but we don\u2019t really know what it does. That’s all we have for you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Kamara isn\u2019t satisfied with that. She wants to do research that leads to answers, explanations, and solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know lactic acid, the stuff that, when you run or work out, makes your legs hurt?\u201d she asks. \u201cWell, I was working with a grad student on a project that takes lactic acid strands and layers them on a substrate to create a biodegradable sensor.\u201d The sensor is intended for use in the shoes of Parkinson\u2019s patients to track their motions; after use, it could safely degrade without harming the environment. \u201cIt would be eco-friendly and allow us to collect data.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kamara\u2019s interest in the environment and eco-friendly design is rooted in her childhood. She grew up in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, but spent many weeks of her childhood visiting her grandparents\u2019 farm, where they grew sweet corn, soybeans, and barley. She and her siblings would run through the cornfields, emerging with a feeling of slight pain in the skin on their faces. \u201cI later learned that it was probably from pesticides,\u201d she says. This connection between health and the environment, and the idea that we should learn from nature and not harm it, was furthered when she took a general biology course in high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned a lot of things, and I really liked learning about all the smaller body parts and systems, because everything within the body just comes together so perfectly. I\u2019ve found that many of engineering\u2019s best processes are biology-inspired,\u201d she says. \u201cThat’s another reason the environment is important, we need to learn from it so that we can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n At 911±¬ΑΟ, she\u2019s taken that idea\u2014learning from nature\u2014and applied it to understanding the human body using circuit-based engineering. One project she worked on involved using circuits and software to monitor the brain waves of a subject who was controlling a ball on the computer screen. \u201cI like anything that is neuroscience or brain-related,\u201d she says. \u201cOne project that really inspired me was one in which rehabilitative engineering was applied to help people who had lost the ability to walk. They used the science and engineering to gradually take supports away and retrain the brain. It was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of 911±¬ΑΟ\u2019s German International Engineering Program, Kamara took her curiosity and drive across the Atlantic to Germany, studying at Technische Universit\u00e4t Darmstadt and working at the Machine Learning and Data Analytics Lab at Friedrich-Alexander Universit\u00e4t as part of 911±¬ΑΟ\u2019s globally-recognized International Engineering Program (IEP).<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re using sensors measure dyes moving around in mouse brains and processing these brain signals to create a new model and road map of how cells communicate.\u201d Kamara says. \u201cWe want to know how the brain works, how these cells communicate. I\u2019m coding in Matlab and Python to make models that see these brain connections.\u201d And Kamara is confident in the outcomes. \u201cIt is so rewarding to be a part of this discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n Kamara says that living, working, and learning in Germany is both challenging and lots of fun. \u201cCulturally, I\u2019m learning that Germans work hard but also know how to have fun and are not afraid to avoid burnout. I\u2019ve also learned how to be independent. I\u2019m in a new country, working in German in highly technical subjects,\u201d she continues. \u201cBut after a few weeks, I was making friends, taking weekend trips around Europe, and feeling confident.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m excited to experience another culture and work in the field\u2014opportunities that many engineering students don\u2019t have. Biomedical engineering is such an exciting field with so much potential,\u201d Kamara says. \u201cMy curiosity has only just started.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Grace Kelly Vanessa Kamara \u201921 thinks engineering has a lot to learn from nature. \u201cI\u2019m a curious person,\u201d says biomedical engineering student Vanessa Kamara \u201921. \u201cI have lots of questions.\u201d Dressed in ripped jeans and sporting a nose ring, with the tips of her dark hair dyed bright magenta, she sips iced coffee and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[131,183],"class_list":["post-2564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2019","tag-college-of-engineering","tag-vanessa-kamara","architecture-web-only-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2564"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3166,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Vanessa](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/11\/Vanessa-and-friends-in-Germany.jpg\")
![\"Vanessa](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/11\/Vanessa-and-friends-in-Spain-364x485.jpg\")