Page 8 - Inventing Tomorrow

8 INVENTING TOMORROW
engineer traces her professional drive to a childhood event—a car accident that left her baby sister with a traumatic brain injury.
Shaw grew up visiting hospitals while her parents sought care for their youngest daughter. She witnessed rst-hand how medicine and technology helped her sister and other patients overcome serious injuries
and illnesses. (Her sister eventually recovered and now is enrolled in graduate school.) Those years stamped Shaw with a desire to pursue a career in medicine and technology—and that attracted her to the University’s biomedical engineering program.
“The professors in my department were always throwing curveballs at us,” she said. “They were teaching us how to think and how to solve a problem. That happens every day in the work- place. You need to come up with a creative solution.”
During college, she threw herself
into extracurricular activities. She served as president of the Biomedical Engineering Society. She volunteered as a mentor in Girls Excel in Math, a group that promotes math and science among junior high school girls. She also served on the senior design
team, where she helped plan a new algorithm for pacemakers based on physiological signals, an experience that foreshadowed her later work
with Medtronic.
By networking through CSE connec- tions, she secured two valuable intern- ships. First she interned at 3M, where she gained rst-hand experiences in
scienti c testing in an industrial setting. Next she got a second intern- ship at St. Jude Medical, a Twin Cities-based medical device company where she worked in manufacturing. Both experiences proved invaluable in helping her land a full-time position after graduation.
Midway through her senior year, Shaw had two job offers. She went
to work at Medtronic and has advanced through several engineering positions over the last six years. She now works as a senior mechanical design engineer in the Medtronic implantable neurostimulator group within the neuromodulation business. The group makes small devices implanted in the body that deliver electrical signals to treat conditions such as chronic pain, essential tremor, and Parkinson’s disease.
“At the end of the day, we always
say it’s for the patients,” said Shaw. “For me, it’s more personal. What if someone in my family needed this?”
TAYLOR TRIMBLE: FEATHERING THE NEST
Taylor Trimble likes an audience.
In college, he used his engineering skills to stage light shows and con- certs. Now the 23-year-old former CSE student, who attended 2010-14, and majored in computer engineering connects with customers right where they live by writing software for Google’s Nest in-home products.
In high school, Trimble became interested in both technology and art—and found a good combination of the two in theater. He also worked with his high school marching band as an audio engineer. He considered a career in lighting design, but his parents pressured him to pursue
a more marketable skill when
he enrolled in the University of Minnesota, so he started out by majoring in electrical engineering.
He sought research experience
but had trouble nding the right opportunity. Then he walked into the of ce of Marvin Marshak, a professor of physics and the director of undergraduate research. Marshak discovered that Trimble had an interest in programming and offered him $100 to develop an iPhone app. “That pretty much changed my life,” Trimble said. “I got really into iPhone programming.”
He taught himself programming through online tutorials and books. He built numerous programs, which included an iPhone calculator and another app that drew Bezier curves. He switched majors to computer engineering and took classes in programming, embedded devices, and microcontrollers.
"That [Undergraduate research] pretty much changed my life. I got really into iPhone programming.”
— TAYLOR TRIMBLE