 Texas Heart Institute prides itself in fostering the next generation of leaders in science, technology, engineering, and math. I'm Maya Pomroy. Welcome to the heartbeat. Hundreds of interns have worked alongside established physicians, scientists, and engineers on projects relating to cardiovascular research. Now let's meet the 2021 class of summer student workers. My name is Christine Kau. I'm a student intern here at the Texas Heart Institute. I work with the electrical physiology, clinical research, and innovations department. I'm Allie Tolosco. My name is Kevin Boy. I'm Hayley Peacher. Why are you interested in STEM? I did a lot of research and found out about the organ donor shortage. And I kind of fell in love with the idea of solving problems like that one and others, specifically in the medical field. I'm able to take the problems that I see in healthcare and turn those problems into problems that are addressable and therefore a solution. I think there's always something to be found in, you know, research. And I think there's always something to add to research that's already pre-existing or to, you know, come up with new concepts yourself. Engineers work closely with doctors and scientists at the Texas Heart Institute to design, develop, and test important medical devices aimed to improving patient outcomes for some of the most difficult to treat heart conditions. THI offers students hands-on experience prototyping life-changing heart devices, conducting experiments, and publishing research. I didn't realize how many collaborative projects there were until I actually started working with some of the mentors here. And I truly found out the collaborative nature of these projects. I designed the in vitro lung propusion model in Fusion 360. So I had to make the plate larger and kind of reverse engineer a few things to make it work for us. I had to figure out what materials would work best and how they would affect the cells. What I worked on was an ex vivo catheter on the bench is what we call it setup. So it allows clinicians or even other manufacturers to be able to kind of test different applications, but they would normally use for catheters. So tell me what was the most exciting thing that you participated in during your experience here at THI? The top exciting thing would be collaborating in one of the preclinical research studies that we've done. It was on repeated ablations and how that affects like the burn. Even when it came down to running the study, it was all hands-on deck. Everybody was helping me out. And I even got to be a co-author on the manuscript that is going to be published. So it was really exciting to be a part of that. Definitely the most exciting thing was seeing kind of the results of all of my hard work. All the months staying up late and running solid works models and prints and everything was able to translate into a product that not only you could use, but the results would be able to be used for other clinicians in the future. The most surprising thing about my time here at THI would be the vast amount of research and projects that are available at the labs. I had a lot more input in things than I thought I would. Kind of as an intern, I was expecting to just follow. Instead, I got an opportunity to lead on projects. If I had questions, they were very receptive to answering those questions and they would ask me questions about what I was doing in my thought process. Solid works is a really priming software that you have to utilize in industry. And so this entire experience here, I basically rebuilt the bioreactor from scratch in solid works. I'm a lot more proficient in 3D printing technology. I'm learning CNC modeling. I was able to provide an element of electrical with wiring, elements of mechanical engineering with 3D printing, all the biomedical application knowledge of working with clinicians. I'm actually going to be interning again in the fall. And I'm going to be working on my own individual project, which is really exciting for me because that leaves room to publish my own manuscript to be the lead author. And it's just super exciting for me as a younger student just starting my career. I'm also going to be shadowing more with Dr. Izzavi, especially in the clinical setting in the hospital, which is going to be really exciting as well.