When James Messina began his undergraduate studies, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to study biology or engineering. He came to GW because the School of Engineering and Applied Science offered a unique, flexible biomedical engineering (BME) program that blended both disciplines in a way many other programs did not.
Messina declared his BME major at the beginning of his second year, ramping up his engineering-based coursework and diving into the discipline headfirst.
Meanwhile, in nearby College Park, Maryland, Maria Pozo was in the final years of her undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland, completing her third year as a bioengineering major. She was struggling with her coursework, finding “things were just not clicking.”
She wondered whether her major was still right for her and sought out lab work to test that proposition. She found work in a metabolic and genetic engineering lab and quickly had her passion for the discipline reignited.
“Working in the lab helped me see how all the pieces fit together, and why we study them. It was fun, and helped me realize I still enjoyed the field and wanted to stay in it. After rediscovering that passion, I wanted to keep learning, and that’s when I decided to apply to PhD programs,” Pozo said.
In the introductory BME course taught by now-Interim Dean Jason Zara, Messina was introduced to ultrasound imaging and its mathematical underpinnings. His interest piqued, Messina joined the BME department chair, Dr. Vesna Zderic’s Therapeutic Ultrasound Lab, where he had the opportunity to support several ultrasound projects, particularly those focused on ultrasound-based cancer treatment methods.
Messina progressed through his coursework, gained hands-on lab experience, and completed summer internships, realizing through these experiences that he wanted to pursue a PhD just before his senior year. He emailed Dr. Zderic, and she immediately began connecting him with various faculty members to discuss potential projects and support him throughout the process.
“It’s a lot of work to find out where you want to do a PhD. It’s not only figuring out where you want to go to school, but also which labs and projects might be the best fit for you. It was a lot to navigate,” Messina explained.
Messina ultimately decided to join the direct-entry PhD program at the University of Michigan, in the Histotripsy Lab, the birthplace of histotripsy, a non-invasive surgical technique using ultrasound.
Histrotripsy involves using ultrasound pulses to break down target tissues into debris that the body can reabsorb. These techniques can treat cancers and other ailments non-invasively, with fewer side effects than more invasive alternatives.
Messina’s work focuses on sarcomas, a specific type of tumor, and he’s optimistic that it will yield increasingly applicable and positive results. “My hope is that I’m doing highly clinically translatable work, and that will lead the effort to help histotripsy be used in more applications,” he shared.
Pozo, no stranger to the difficult PhD application process herself, weighed her options for where to pursue her PhD. She was connected with BME Professor Emilia Entcheva, whose lab website she found immediately intimidating.
“At the time, the front page of her lab was a lot of pictures of microscopes and fancy lab equipment, and I felt intimidated. I immediately thought, ‘I don’t think I can do that, I don’t know how to use that equipment,’” she said.
Luckily, she didn’t let that intimidation deter her and decided to pursue her PhD in BME at GW in Professor Entcheva’s lab. She started in the lab the summer before her program officially began, using the time to strengthen her electrical engineering skills so she could confidently use the equipment she had seen pictures of online just months before.
During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lab access was limited for safety reasons, Pozo pivoted to writing a review paper at her advisor, Professor Entcheva’s suggestion. Pozo began exploring the genomic function of the heart, which ultimately led her to pursue research in transcriptomics, the study of RNA transcripts produced by genomes that reveal when and where genes are activated or deactivated. The team studied whether the cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, they created in the lab, were comparable to native cells in the left ventricle of the adult heart to see whether studying the effects of drugs on their manufactured cardiomyocytes yielded useful data about how actual heart cells would respond.
“The point of doing the study was to investigate the new anti-cancer and cardiometabolic drugs that are emerging and becoming very commonplace. We need to study the electromechanics and metabolism of the heart to understand the effects of these drugs, and to ensure that there are no adverse cardiac effects, a leading cause of drugs being pulled from the market,” Pozo explained.
Ultimately, in a recent publication, Pozo and the rest of the team found that the cardiomyocytes had expression patterns similar to those of the heart’s left ventricle, suggesting that the other similar studies testing these drugs are fruitful and worth completing.
Both Messina and Pozo came to campus to pursue their passion for BME and gained unparalleled technical experience in the process. When asked what advice they’d give to younger students, both echoed the same sentiment that shaped their time at GW: get involved in a lab.
“Get involved with the labs on campus. There are many labs to choose from, but I got involved by just asking Dr. Zderic, working with a graduate researcher, and doing my own side projects. It will help you get an internship, which will help shape your path after graduation,” Messina said.
“It’s most helpful to identify what you might be interested in and reach out to the professor. I think most professors are open to including students; it’s just a matter of whether they have something for you to work on,” Pozo explained.
Pozo cautioned against undergraduates doubting themselves or their contributions. “When you’re an undergrad, you feel like you may not have much to offer because you haven’t learned a lot or had a ton of hands-on experience yet. But professors are so interested in and open to younger students because they know they have a lot of potential and time to do meaningful, long-term research,” she said.
“Don’t get caught up in the trap of feeling like you have nothing to offer, because you do, and it will lead you to learn a lot about yourself and your discipline,” Pozo concluded.