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Sareh Rajaee |
Engineering student on her way to Brown Med School via Germany
As East Greenwich resident Sareh Rajaee prepared to spend a year studying and working in Germany through the URI International Engineering Program, her long list of accomplishments had already set her apart from her fellow engineering students.
The biomedical engineering and German major completed an internship this summer with Slater Hospital to refine a voice-activated device that allows disabled patients to call for a nurse using advanced voice recognition technology when they are unable to press the call button.
Working in cooperation with URI Professor Ying Sun, she also worked on a multi-port “sip and puff” switch enabling those with disabilities to control their environment -- operate the TV or lights, for instance -- by blowing into a tube.
Rajaee’s outstanding academic record and aptitude with projects such as these have earned her admission to the Brown Medical School through it’s Early Identification Program, the first URI engineering student ever to be admitted through the program. While she still has two more years left in her undergraduate education, she is already excited about the prospect of medical school.
“My dad got his Ph.D. at Brown, and I spent a lot of time there at his lab, so I feel comfortable there,” said Rajaee, a native of Iran who speaks four languages. “And I love Providence, so I’m very excited about living there for four years.”
To gain experience with medical research, Rajaee spent time last summer working with Dr. Ali Nayer at Rhode Island Hospital studying why so many kidney transplants fail. They believe the failures may be tied to certain diseases.
Rajaee is currently in Germany studying at the Technical University of Braunschweig and working at Siemens Corp. URI’s five-year International Engineering Program requires that students study both engineering and a foreign language, and they spend the year following their junior year studying and working abroad.
“I’m a little bit nervous and very excited at the same time, because I’ve never been far from home before,” said Rajaee, who founded the URI Knitting Club and has also made a name for herself as an artist.
“Sareh is an outstanding scholar with talents in engineering, languages and research, and she is particularly interested in helping patients with disabilities, so she’s a perfect fit for Brown’s highly competitive program,” said Joanna Norris, URI associate professor of biological sciences and the chair of the University’s Health Professions Advisory Committee. “There are very few spots open to Rhode Islanders at Brown Med School, and we’ve never had an engineering student accepted, so we’re especially proud that Sareh was selected.”
By Todd McLeish
