During my time as an intern in Stryker Mako, my primary responsibility was to serve as the Product Development Lead in the design and development of a next generation partial knee replacement implant. This entailed several activities, such as designing minimally-viable prototypes and evaluating said prototypes to prove out design features. In addition to implant design, I completed critical path activities in the evaluation of a different material for FDA clearance. Lastly, I drafted quality controlled documents to record feasibility studies and verification tests.

As an R&D engineering co-op in Medtronic's Endovascular division, I was part of a team developing a next-generation stent graft system. I developed representative models of the abdominal vasculature to realistically evaluate the stent grafts and delivery systems during all phases of the product lifecycle. During my time there, I collaborated with medical imaging experts to analyze anatomies to develop a model representative of the intended patient population. I also determined clinical relevancies and justifications for stent graft testing conditions and specifications that were implemented into (1) accelerated fatigue tests and (2) bench top tests.

As a researcher in Penn State's Artificial Heart Lab, I was part of a group that experimentally analyzed and characterized the flow fields within ventricular assist devices. The purpose of this research was to predict problems and identify specific regions within the various ventricular assist devices that hemolysis or thrombosis are likely to occur. During my time in the Artificial Heart Lab, I collaborated with Doctoral candidated, Master's candidates, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

As an Advanced Implants Research and Development Intern at Stryker Incubation of Medical Technologies, I was part of a small team that worked to redesign and improve the instrumentation used in a type of partial knee replacement. Instruments were either redesigned or altered using Pro Engineer, then prototypes could be created out of a hard plastic using a rapid prototyping machine. Simulated knee replacements were done using these prototypes on artificial bones. At the end of my internship, all of the instruments were machined out of metal and evaluated in a cadaver lab where the entire knee replacement surgery was simulated. Other responsibilities included presenting ideas at weekly brainstorming sessions and researching and reporting on an alternative, cementless form of prosthesis adhesion.

As a Summer Associate at Medtronic's World Headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I was part of the Surface Analysis Team. I was the lead of an advanced research project that aimed to optically and non-invasively measure protein adsorption in-situ on dynamically coated surfaces using spectroscopic ellipsometry. My role was to develop an operating protocol that successfully replicated published results, which was presented along with other findings at Medtronic's monthly Protein Analysis Forum. During my time on the Surface Analysis Team, I was exposed to many other optical imaging techniques besides spectroscopic ellipsometry, such as white light interferometry, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.