PhD, Biomedical Engineering
Grove School of Engineering
As a junior at the University of Oklahoma, where she majored in chemical engineering, Laura Causey spent six months in Bolivia teaching children such healthy tips as how to brush their teeth. As a doctoral candidate at City College, she ran the New York marathon to raise funds for students she was mentoring in a biomedical engineering minority scholars program after its funding had been cut.
Altruism has always been her motivation, concedes Laura, received a PhD in biomedical engineering from the Grove School of Engineering, supported by a NASA Graduate Student Research Fellowship.
However it wasn’t until she heard bioengineer Rebecca Richards-Kortum speak at City College in 2009 on technologies being developed for the developing world that the North Carolina native zoned in on what she really wanted to do.
“Ever since I listened to Dr. Richards-Kortum, my career aspiration has been to combine the experiences from my biomedical engineering graduate studies to create innovative technologies that are relevant for healthcare in developing countries,” she said.
Laura is now working with Dr. Richards-Kortum at her Rice 360˚: Institute for Global Health Technologies at Rice University in Houston.
She calls it her “dream job." Her project there, a device to monitor blood pressure in pregnant women in developing nations, will take her to the southern African nation of Malawi next spring for clinical trials.
“Laura is an unusually socially committed graduate student who in addition to being an excellent researcher has made a major commitment to work with disadvantaged students,” said Sheldon Weinbaum, Emeritus CUNY Distinguished Professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering.
That is well-deserved praise.
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“My career aspiration has been to combine the experiences from my biomedical engineering graduate studies to create innovative technologies that are relevant for healthcare in developing countries.”
Last Updated: 07/30/2015 06:05