Jordan Harrod, '18

Where are they now? - update July 2019: After graduating in 2018, Jordan started her Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics through the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program. She now works with Dr. Ed Boyden and Dr. Emery Brown on applications of brain stimulation and deep learning for sleep and anesthesia. She also created a YouTube channel called everydAI, which focuses on educating the public on how we interact with artificial intelligence in our daily lives, and is the Vice President of the Cornell Class of 2018 Alumni Council. She hopes to make it back to campus for Homecoming 2019!"

May 2018:

Why did you choose Cornell?
It was the only campus where I really felt at home, like I could happily live there for four years.

Why did you choose to major in BME at Cornell?
It was actually the major I wanted to study when I applied to Cornell, but since it wasn’t offered at the time, I had planned to be a BEE major with a BME minor. Once the department announced that the undergraduate program would be starting my sophomore year, I immediately switched over.

What was your favorite class at Cornell BME and why?
My favorite class was probably BME 3030. It was my first real introduction to hands-on circuit development, and I really liked how much flexibility we had when it came to designing heart rate monitors and developing an experimental plan for the gait analysis project. I felt like I gained an intuitive sense of how to develop circuits to suit my needs that was grounded in the actual underlying physics.

Are you affiliated with any research group or faculty? If so, what research are you working on?
I’m in the Bonassar Lab, working on meniscal enthesis characterization and replication. I’ve been in the lab for over three years, and my work has ranged from the development of a specialized demineralization procedure to tensile testing to microCT image analysis of mineralization gradients.

What clubs/organizations do you participate in at Cornell?
I am the Co-President and Co-Founder of the Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Society, the Co-President of the Engineering Ambassadors, and the President of the Recreational Fencing Club. I am also a brother in Alpha Phi Omega, a teacher for Splash! At Cornell, a member of the Engineering Dean’s Undergraduate Advisory Council, and an LSAMP Scholar through Diversity Programs in Engineering.

What is something that surprised you about the major/experience?
Everything! That was part of the fun. Being the first class of a brand new major made it hard to anticipate exactly what we would be doing in any given semester, so the last three years have been full of good surprises, from what types of courses would be offered to whether or not I’d be a teaching assistant for a course that I took in the past.

While at Cornell, what did you do for fun?
I’m pretty athletic, so I did a lot of fencing and tennis. Outside of that, my friends and I go to the Commons pretty often to check out restaurants that we really want to try.

Favorite memory?
Definitely the department holiday party. Whoever superimposed faculty headshots onto break dancing elves has my eternal praise.

What’s next?
I’ll be doing my PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics at Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology as a GEM Fellow, and am looking to do research in developing instrumentation for neuromodulation and neural feedback systems.