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and blood flow, especially as it applied to the abnormal blood flow in sickle
cell disease.
Like Barabino, Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic initially wanted to study
medicine, but “decided I didn’t have the stomach for it.” She loved music
and writing but felt she lacked the talent. She decided to study chemical
engineering, “because my dad was an engineer.” After graduate school, she
took a serendipitous path, exploring several different areas of research
until she discovered a new field that clicked with her—tissue engineering.
“I found a way to circle back to medicine in a different way,” she said.
Kacey Ronaldson, a postdoctoral fellow in Vunjak-Novakovic’s lab, also
thought she wanted to be a doctor. In college her first job was working in
ambulances—and that was enough to convince her that she really didn’t
want to be a doctor. “I took an internship in materials engineering,” she
said, “and that kind of clicked. I still wanted to help people, and biomedical
engineering seemed to be a good way to do that.”

DISCOVER YOUR PASSION

“I think what’s important is that you try out different things early on,”
said Karen Echeverri, who grew up in Ireland and was the only child in her
family to finish her university education. She initially studied physics,
“but that didn’t motivate me very well,” so she ended up getting a dual
degree in biochemistry and microbiology. As an undergraduate and then
as a graduate student, she worked in several labs across Europe, studying
yeast and drosophila, or fruit flies. Nothing really clicked until she heard
a seminar by Elly Tanaka, the woman who would become her PhD mentor,
and “completely fell in love with regeneration. So I had quite a circuitous
route to getting my PhD! I think that for young people it’s really important
to find something you’re passionate about. Don’t let failure get you down—
failing at things, or finding things you don’t like, is the path to finding what
you are passionate about.”
Abidemi Bolu Ajiboye earned a dual bachelor of science degree in
biomedical and electrical engineering, with a minor in computer science.

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