Surgical precision
Sometimes you have to walk around in another person’s lab coat to really understand a problem. In ES 227, “Medical Device Design,” engineering students are given the opportunity to solve practical problems in a hospital setting, trying out the tools, learning about their use in real-world situations, and, in some cases, even sitting in on surgical procedures. Taught by Conor Walsh, a newly appointed assistant professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), with help from teaching fellow Sam Kesner, the course connects the dots between engineering and medicine. “SEAS has a lot of great facilities, expertly trained faculty, and eagerly motivated students — but it’s not a hospital,” says Paul Loschak, a graduate student in mechanical engineering whose team designed a portable cranial drill. Seeing the tools and procedures firsthand is essential, he says. “Otherwise, we’re doing nothing but making assumptions on top of assumptions,...