Hello!

My name is Amy Shah Patel and I am a biomedical engineer.  I created this biomedical blog to keep myself up-to-date with new medical technologies and treatments. I want to help people learn about diverse issues in the biotech, medical device, & pharmaceutical fields. If you, as a reader, have any suggestions or comments, please contact me and I will be happy to get back to you and/or update my site.

Currently, I am searching for job opportunities in the Bay Area in California in the medical device and/or biotech field.  My most recent position was as the clinical research associate at NeoMatrix, LLC in Irvine, CA - a medical device company that creates a portable breast cancer screening devices and provides them for OB/GYNs.   My position entailed a multitude of duties involving marketing education, biomarker research, developing relationships with other companies and organizations, and leading new projects for the company.

Previously, I have worked in the Cardiopulmonary Transport & Tissue Remodeling lab at the University of California, Irvine on a project in which I created a 3-D tissue engineered construct that mimics the human airway. I used a combination of three different cell types (human umbilical vein endothelial cells, normal human lung fibroblasts, and normal human bronchial epithelial cells), fibrin gels, and transwells to create this matrix. I grew the cells under ideal conditions until they reached confluency, then I seeded them into an engineered construct that has been designed previously in Dr. Steven George’s lab. I then waited for capillaries to form from the human umbilical vein endothelial cells migrating off of microcarrier beads. Lastly, I scraped the layer of epithelial cells on the transwells so that the tissue engineered construct experiences an induced “asthma attack” and studied how to improve the cells’ response to this injury.

I have also conducted research in a Developmental and Cell Biology Lab at UCI working with cancer cells and testing different ligands on them to observe their proliferative/apoptotic response. I am very interested in cancer cells, tissue engineering, artificial organs, and stem cell research.

Community outreach and volunteering has always been of great importance to me. I was Secretary and Public Relations Manager of UC Irvine’s Engineering Student Council. This national student government organization helps spread engineering throughout the community by educating people of the importance and eclectic nature of engineering. We also aid student, faculty, and industrial networking through educational and social experiences.

In the future, I would like to work for a company that has has goals of changing peoples lives for the better. To me, biomedical engineering is not the study of medicine and engineering to find temporary cures, but instead it is to find solutions to improve the health and welfare of society.

You can find more information about me and/or connect to me through LinkedIn.