March is Women’s History month, which is a great time to honor and reflect on the many contributions and successes of women across a variety of industries.
It is no secret that women are still largely under-represented in the field of engineering. However, there are more and more women graduating every year with degrees in biomedical engineering. As of 2016, women earned roughly 40% of the biomedical engineering degrees in the United States, which is higher than other engineering sectors. It is encouraging to see the gender gap in this field narrowing every year.
Our team at MediSurge is proud to currently have six female engineering students on staff as interns, some of whom are assisting in our collaborative 3D additive manufacturing research project with aMDI. Today, we’d like to introduce you to two of them:
Victoria (Tori) Gutowski
Tori is a senior engineering student at Grand Valley State University who will be graduating in August 2019. She is majoring in product design and manufacturing engineering. After completing NASA’s Women in STEM High School (WISH) Aerospace Scholars program, Tori knew that engineering was her passion and what she wanted to focus on moving forward.
During her time at Grand Valley, she has helped develop a mobility device for a young boy with congenital limb differences and is currently working along with KCAD design students and the Spectrum Health innovations team to address various problems in hospital operating rooms.
Her role at MediSurge involves writing and executing validation protocols and reports and designing manufacturing fixtures. After graduation, she hopes to continue her career in medical device design.
When speaking about advice that she has for other women in the field, Tori said, “…men will definitely outnumber you, but don’t let that intimidate you. Just because there are less women does not mean we are less important in this field of work.”
Jill, who was born and raised in Holland, Michigan, is currently student at Grand Valley State University who is majoring in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering. Throughout her college career she has worked on numerous engineering projects, including designing recreational sailboats and various robots. She also contributed to a home renovation plan for an affordable housing project.
At MediSurge, Jill has had numerous hands-on learning experiences which have given her a deeper understanding of equipment and process validations. She also recently participated in a new product launch and assisted in in submitting a 510(K) to the FDA.
We are proud to hire local talent and foster the education of future engineers. We are also proud to play a small part in narrowing the gender gap in the engineering industry.
We will be introducing more of our team members soon, so be sure to check our blog frequently!