INTERNSHIP AT BOSTON SCIENTIFIC
Description
In the summer between my junior and senior year, I interned in the Neuromodulation R&D division at Boston Scientific. I was part of the Systems Engineering team, and for 12 weeks I supported the next generation of Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) and Deep-Brain Stimulation (DBS) devices.
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More specifically, I had three main projects. While I can't describe in detail what they entail due to confidentiality, they involved work in chip characterization, API development, and UI/UX research. It was a fantastic experience! While I had other offers, I decided to choose this internship because it was a fantastic exposure to brain engineering, which is one of the main areas I am interested in. Boston Scientific also had an incredible technical program composed of exciting projects with which I knew I would grow and contribute significantly. While interviewing, I felt the feeling of family and kindness that is part of their culture, and it was something that was also very attractive to me. In general, interning in a biomedical company is a wonderful experience that allowed me to have real-world experience and learn from all of the experts working there.
Reflection
As mentioned above, part of my work there involved chip characterization of their next-generation devices. What this type of work entails is performing multiple tests to evaluate how specific characteristics behave. However, since this is a new device that is a breakthrough in the field, our testing setup was also something new that was created without a manual or the right answers hidden somewhere. So a lot of my work and contribution in this project was creating innovative solutions to fix/improve/enhance our testing. It was to think outside the box to fix issues whenever something did not work (which was quite often).
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I ended up creating a new testing system, that included a unique testing physiology, a software library to simplify it and an analysis method to understand our data. I learned a lot, especially when dealing with failure. I felt that I failed almost every two days during this project. Something almost always went wrong, and since it is a completely new testing system, there is no manual or solution hidden. I remember particularly one day when something stopped working, and I felt like a complete failure. I spend then 4 straight hours, without any breaks, just trying new things to fix the issue. I was so frustrated and down on myself at the time, but when I talked with my mentor about it, he helped me put things in perspective. He said that I should not feel like I hit a roadblock. Instead, I was still progressing, but just in a non-visable ways. Troubleshooting is a learning opportunity, and I need to embrace it as a lot of personal growth comes from it. So after I solved the problem, I was very grateful to see how much I learned about the setup, myself and how I can be better going forward. It was truly, in the end, a success.
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Throughout my time in this internship, the most important things that I learned were about resilience, growth, work ethic, and networking. All of these projects are so inspiring and there are so many people that need them. Reslience and work ethic is so important to make them reality. When innovating, we are like pushing through a wave of problems so we can breakthrough and reach new horizons. Therefore, there will be for sure problems that don't have an obvious solution, and it is so important to keep an open mind, and work through it with diligence and patience. I also love to get feedback and improve from it. It was great to explore my own growth by doing self-evaluations and make the best out of having managers and mentors with you. Finally, I also learned about teamwork and networking. There are so many wonderful people in this space, especially in the office there. So it was fantastic to go and ask people questions, and learn from each of them, even if they were in a completely different sector.