My bioengineering program application essay

Fourteen years ago, when I was three years out of college, I started thinking long and hard about what I wanted from work and life. The thought process started me on a path that began with medical school, continued with training in anesthesiology, and now leads me to engineering. At the beginning I decided I have three interlocking goals for my work: to have fun with it, to match it to my strengths, and to contribute to society both in the short and the long term. Medicine was my starting point, rather than a more purely technical field, because of the huge range of possibilities I saw for work at its intersections with other fields. At the end of medical school, I chose anesthesiology based mostly on the thought process it emphasized: nearly pure physiology, with short-term processes predominant and the creation of a mental model of the patient's internal milieu vital. In anesthesia there is much that's exciting, and much that's routine: much of our time is spent acting as simple feedback control systems. I started thinking, "how could this be improved?" and talking to friends who are engineers; after completion of my anesthesia training, I investigated further by starting to take engineering courses through Berkeley Extension. Though I have much more to learn, I know now that work at the intersection of engineering and anesthesiology excites me, and that a research career there will fulfill my goals from fourteen years ago.

Although I expect that my research interests and ideas will change with more exposure to the field, I have specific ideas now for areas of research during a Ph.D program. It is important to me that I make use of the knowledge and experience I already have, and I find myself drawn to modeling and control theory; it is a natural move, then, to investigate the creation of adaptive, predictive models of human physiology under anesthesia and in intensive care. From such models, we could produce monitoring equipment that made specific, timely, and informed suggestions and warnings; as an extreme case (perhaps for space travel or battlefield operations), the system could feed back adjustments to therapies as a sort of "auto-anesthetist." And of course, in the process of finding appropriate inputs for such a system it is possible we would create useful new monitoring measures or shed light on the basics of anesthetic care.

One question I have considered is, why do a Ph.D? I have tried making the argument that I would do just as well to read a few books, take a few classes, and work with good engineers. The answer is, the Ph.D. program will not only give me time to learn the facts and techniques of engineering, but more importantly it will introduce me to the process and culture of research. Though I've had some exposure to the research process, most notably during a two-month externship at CDC, the Ph.D. program will give me intensive practice and training in planning, organizing, and writing up at least one major project with experienced researchers advising me along the way. In it, I will also get exposure to academic research and its funding process, which will help me decide whether academic or commercial research is my chosen destination.

I am applying only to the joint UCB-UCSF program, both because of its academic strengths and because I am familiar with it. Especially for research associated with anesthesiology, this program is hard to beat: it combines UC Berkeley's top-notch engineering faculty and research program with UCSF's world-class research hospital and anesthesiology and physiology programs. My familiarity with the program is another significant advantage: the running start I get from knowing the area and some of the faculty -- for example, anesthesiologists like Art Wallace and Larry Litt, who already combine anesthesia with engineering in ways that interest me -- will let me get to productive work more quickly.

I have high expectations for myself, and plan a rewarding, satisfying research career at the junction of medicine and engineering. I hope for an interview with you soon.