Michael Russo
Class of 2021
Biomedical Engineer at University of Pittsburgh Dept. of Rehabilitation Science & Technology
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Fellow at CMI
Michael is a current student in the Pitt Bioengineering MS in Medical Product Engineering program and graduated from Drexel University with a BS in biomedical engineering and a minor in business administration. His main interest is the creation of novel assistive devices for those with disabilities and the commercialization of those technologies.
My Journey Through Biomedical Engineering
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Inspiration:
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My story with biomedical engineering extends all the way back to my 8th grade year with two inspirations. The first was a year-long after-school program called Future City which had kids simulate running a city as best they could in Sim City 4, then make a diorama of the city, and write a report about the ways the city accomplishes or is designed to facilitate whatever industry/project that was the theme of the competition that year, and bring that all to a convention hall in Philadelphia to be judged against other teams from the city and its suburbs. That year’s theme was biomedical engineering and our essay focused on the top research being done in our fictional city of Hygeia (the Greek goddess of health) to treat Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia with microrobots and how telemedicine was transforming doctor-patient relations. Back then, those technologies seemed quite distant and no one could have predicted a widespread adoption of telemedicine in a global pandemic, but it was my first introduction to biomedical engineering as a career path and one I decided I would prepare for in high school.
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The second inspiration was during another after-school program called Reading Olympics in which kids had to read as many books as they could from a list given out at the beginning of the year and then retain as much knowledge from those books as possible for a game of trivia at the end of the year in a team-based competition against other schools. One of the books was Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill whose main protagonist, Durango, is a bounty hunter on Mars and has an AI chip implanted directly on his brain. The AI has its own consciousness and spends the novel as a voice in Durango’s head giving him suggestions, warnings, and chastising. Though I had been introduced to the concept of robots with AI’s before, I don’t think I had ever contemplated a built-in brian-mounted AI, which I would later learn is the field of study of brain-computer interfaces. Having a personal assistant that went everywhere with you, had near-omnipotence, could give you directions, and had a distinct voice and a personality seemed like a perfect medical device and became what I wanted to do when I pursued biomedical engineering in college. In the time between me leaving grade school and entering college, almost every smartphone had some personal assistant added to it that could do basically everything, but it still wasn’t embedded in the brain, so I didn’t lose hope of being the first to invent such a device.
First Experiences in Biomedical Engineering:
I chose to pursue my biomedical engineering degree at Drexel University, I incidentally got accepted to UPitt a week or so later, and picked the neuroengineering concentration because I was set on learning to make implantable brain-computer interfaces. Coincidentally, my roommate also had the same goal of making a BCI, but after freshman year, he decided to switch to electrical and computer engineering because he was more interested in the technical aspects of making such a device and was concerned he wouldn’t learn that in an undergraduate biomedical engineering program. After some reflection, I agreed he was possibly correct and switched my concentration to devices and imaging to learn more about all devices and not just BCIs. I believe it ended up being the right decision because it greatly broadened my knowledge base and is one of the reasons I am here now at Pitt pursuing a degree in Medical Product Engineering.
Though I changed my concentration, I was still very interested in the idea of using AI for helping those with disabilities, and in my senior year, I finally got my chance. Since my junior year, I had been working as a software engineer with a professor at his startup, and was using computer vision algorithms and image processing techniques to turn images of patients into 3D models to fit them with custom-sized devices. From this work, I got the idea of using computer vision for the aid of people with visual impairments and asked teammates from a previous class if they would like to turn this idea into our senior design project. What we ended up creating was a wearable device that could read EXIT signs and convert what they read (EXIT, <EXIT, EXIT>, or <EXIT>) and their location relative to the user into auditory feedback so the users could find emergency exits before they need them. Though it wasn’t perfectly accurate, and didn’t interface with the brain, I was still happy I made my own AI assistant less than a decade after reading the book that inspired my career path.
Coming to the University of Pittsburgh:
While completing my senior design project, I became more and more in love with the idea of making assistive devices and the design process in general, so when I was looking for graduate programs, Pitt’s MS in Medical Product Engineering caught my eye. Since I got here, I have learned quite a lot about not just design, but how to incorporate peoples’ wants and needs into that design, how to perform customer discovery, and how to prototype effectively. In just a year, I have participated in class projects for which I have designed a software to aid in endoscopic surgery (a project that we have won $8,000 in funding for) and a new racing wheelchair.
It’s only been a decade since my inspirations in 2011 and I’m only just getting started with my life as a biomedical engineer.