Former 2020 BRAIN REU Student Gained Admission into Engineering Medicine Program

Paras Gupta, a former BRAIN REU undergraduate student, got accepted into Texas A&M’s Engineering Medicine Program (EnMed). EnMed is a unique and newer medical school in Houston, integrating Engineering Design principles into the typical medical school curriculum. He will be graduating with both a Medical Doctorate (MD) and a Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) in Biomedical Engineering, which will be a perfect follow up to his current Masters in Biomedical Engineering and Global Medical Innovation.

Paras worked at the Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Lab with Dr. Kevin Nathan (a Ph.D. graduate of the BRAIN Center now working as a postdoctoral fellow at John Hopkins University) and Dr. Jose L. Contreras-Vidal as an REU undergraduate student. He interpreted EEG data of able-bodied subjects as they elicited motor imagery while walking strapped in an exoskeleton (REX Bionics). He discovered trends in brain activity at a regional level using functional connectivity methods such as Granger causality. He generated MATLAB models to test hypotheses and identify anatomical regions of significance.

Paras is currently rounding up his Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering and Global Medical Innovation at Rice University. He is keen on integrating healthcare and engineering to develop and improve clinical reasoning and provide sustainable and creative advances in these disciplines. He hopes to further connect medicine to engineering with work in biomedical design and clinical practice with his study path.

Paras recognizes that he would not have achieved this alone without the research mentoring and strong recommendation from Dr. Jose L. Contreras-Vidal and Dr. Kevin Nathan. He thanks them for their time and endeavors.