My name is Mark Bucsek and I'm currently attending the University of Pittsburgh to major in Biomedical Engineering. I grew up in Edinboro Pennsylvania before moving to Meadville, Pennsylvania before I started high school. I had many influential teachers at Meadville that got me very interested medicine. I have wanted to become a surgeon of some type for quite sometime now, but I thought that it would be boring to just major in Biology or Chemistry. With a strong interest in Math and Physics as well, it was a very easy choice to choose Biomedical Engineering as a major. At the moment I am also considering a double major in Physics.
I not only chose Biomedical Engineering because it covers all of the subjects that I like, but I plan on using my degree when I (hopefully) become a surgeon. I have not decided yet if I want to specialize in surgical instrumentation or biomaterials, but whichever I end up deciding, I will use my specialty to somehow complement my surgeries when I am older. There is no way that I am going to work this hard as an undergrad to throw away all of the knowledge that I am going to gain.
I chose Pitt for 2 reasons. First, I had heard many great things about the school of Engineering here. I saw their name on every list of the top Engineering schools that I happened to look at, and I loved everything about the campus since the first time that I set foot on it. Second, with an ultimate goal to go into medicine and become a surgeon, what better place is there to be then here? With a top of the line pre-med program, and more hospitals and doctors within walking distance then you could possibly imagine, I figured that this would be the perfect place to gain valuable experience in a hospital setting.
In my free time I love to watch football (GO STEELERS!) and ski. I competed in many freestyle skiing competitions throughout my younger years, but after suffering my fifth concussion last year, my doctor made the decision for me to stop hucking myself in circles after going off jumps to ensure that I will live past the age of 19. I still enjoy skiing alot, but I am slightly more cautious not to end up back in the hospital.
For our project, my team and I are studying the transportation of cardiac support patients around UPMC. We are going to measure the dimensions of all of the elevators, potential transport beds, cardiac support devices, and any other insturment that may need to travel with a patient to ensure that their transportation around UPMC goes as smoothly as possible. I am hoping to have a positive impact on UPMC by successfully completing this project.
I could not have been assigned to participate in a more perfect project. With a strong interest in medicine, there was no other project that I could see being more beneficial. I am hoping to gain a lot of engineering experience out of this while hopefully improving UPMC at the same time.
This website talks about what exactly the artificial heart is, how it works, and how difficult the surgery is
This website tells the story of the first ever artificial heart transplant
This website talks about the future of the artificial heart as well as it's importance.
