Senior Camilo Ruiz engineers solutions
Camilo Ruiz was only four when his parents moved from Colombia to the United States, and though he doesn’t remember the move, his bicultural upbringing and his close ties to Colombia have shaped how he views his role in the world. “I'm a very impact-driven person,” explains Ruiz, a senior biological engineering major. “Over my life, I seek to contribute to society in a way that scales across people and across time.” Engineering with a shared goal During his time at MIT, Ruiz has sought out collaborative research projects with real-world impacts. At the DNA Medicine Institute, a small biotechnology startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he helped develop a handheld blood diagnostic device. “Effectively you can take a whole room’s worth of hospital equipment and shrink it down into a device that fits in the palm of your hand,” Ruiz says. The device, which won the Nokia XChallenge Competition, uses 1,500 times less blood than a...