Ami Kling
Biomedical Engineering
I am a second-year PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering program, although I never intended to pursue a graduate education when I first came to Michigan Tech. I came to this school as an undergraduate student in the fall of 2013 with an associate degree in hand, intent on earning a bachelor’s in 2-3 years and obtaining a job – any job – in the medical device industry. Four years, an undergrad degree, and a newfound love of physics later, I became first a masters and then a PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering department.
My research focuses on a novel medical imaging technique called elastography, which is used to noninvasively quantify tissue stiffness distributions in vivo. Specifically, I am interested in combining optical and ultrasound elastography techniques in order to create an improved system that has potential applications in both research and clinical environments.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the DeVlieg Foundation and the Graduate Dean Awards Advisory Panel for the support that has been provided to me for the summer of 2019. This financial support will allow me to concentrate efforts on developing instrumentation, gathering experimental data, and publishing results. Consequently, this support will also further my overarching goal of creating a useful, portable, and readily available diagnostic imaging system. I would also like to thank: the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Programs Committee for their recommendation; my advisors, Dr. Jingfeng Jiang and Dr. Sean J. Kirkpatrick, for their guidance and support; and Mr. David Rosen for his assistance with this project.