Amy Bogucki  | Summer Research

 

St. Charles, Missouri native, Amy Bogucki, is a senior at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. After hearing about Purdue from a family friend, Amy decided to visit to the school and see the campus she had heard so much about. She fell in love with the campus, and especially liked the BME program. Both of those factors led her to attend school at Purdue and pursue a degree in engineering. During the spring of 2013 Amy began working with Dr. Craig Goergen in his Cardiovascular Imaging Research Laboratory. She enjoyed this so much that she wanted to continue to work in his lab over the summer and applied for the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

SURF

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) is a program for undergraduate students to conduct research, attend weekly professional development seminars, participate in a research poster symposium, and attend social activities. Students who are admitted into SURF work on campus full-time for 11 weeks. Amy was accepted into this program, and was therefore able to continue her experience with Dr. Goergen. Her project was testing the repeatability of measuring volumetric flow in the renal arteries and veins in wild type mice, using the Vevo 2100 Ultrasound system. During her time with SURF, while working with and being supervised by Dr. Goergen, Amy was also able to collaborate with two other undergraduate students, Hilary Schroeder and Alexa Yrineo, who are also at the Weldon School.

THE EXPERIENCE

 “I would recommend a research experience to anyone!” says Amy. “I think the only way to learn something is to try it”.  And you learn a lot in a short amount of time. Being in SURF will give you the ability to participate in activities that you would not have the opportunity to do during regular classes. You will learn an abundance of new information from both your cooperating faculty member and your graduate student mentor, and you are a step ahead when it comes to lab classes.

WORDS OF ADVICE

Amy believes that the skills she learned through SURF will be very beneficial when it comes time for Senior Design. Her advice for anyone who is interested in the SURF program is to talk to their professors. “Try to get involved in their research during the semester. Then you will be able to see if you can continue the experience on through the summer with SURF.”