Weeks 1 and 2:

When we first met with Dr. Wang on the Sunday we arrived I still was not sure if I'm going to meet with my mentor the next day because the student assistant who was in contact with my mentor informed me that he is trying to schedule an appointment with him. I was about to leave the meeting with Dr. Wang after he finished but gave it a shot and made inquiry about my mentor (Dr. Martin Prince) from him. After a short phone call I was all set. Meeting was schedule at 9:00 AM the next day.

On Monday at 9:00 AM, I entered MRI body reading room and met with Dr. Martin Prince.  The moment you want to introduce yourself to a person who is chief of MRI at New York hospital and Professor of Radiology both at Cornell and Columbia and not sure what to say! My mentor is very friendly and introduction went pretty well. After knowing that my background is more toward engineering rather than biology, I was only challenged for human organ recognition. He was looking at stack of MRI images of a patient, scrolling through axis of the body and asked me what those two relatively bean-shaped spots with different contrast than the rest of the medium are? I was correct, they were kidneys. Although it took a minute for me to answer that question!  

I have had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Prince for the past few days. Since he has appointment both at Cornell and Columbia We have been to both locations and Dr. Prince goes through tens of patient's MRI, CT, etc  images everyday with the help of his assistants. They compare recently taken diagnostic images of the patients with previous records. Any changes in size, intensity, shape of the organs or appearance of new lesions can be indicative of abnormalities. Well, this is too simplified and this is just my understanding.

I also had the chance to go to Jacob Javits Convention Center with Dr. Prince for biomedical devices fair. Products range from small parts to robots used in production lines. You could find syringe filters, plastic adapters, tubes, and small parts that are designed and manufactured for more complex biomedical devices. Although it was a short visit but going to these type of exhibitions will give people ideas about what they can build using what is available off-the-shelf as we were talking with Dr. Prince about it.

So far I have had great experience and looking forward to working with my mentor because I'm learning a lot. Also, NYC is pretty fun in summer!