"Speaker 1: My name is John Ramsay.
I am a graduate student, a PhD candidate in the finals program and I look at how muscles
change in size after someone is a stroke.
And I try to use that information to create computer simulations of how they move after
they had a stroke.
Mainly I work alone, most of my work is on a computer.
So, but we obviously work with a cohort of fellow students in the lab.
I mean we're all kind of trying to act, ask and answer the same question so.
Probably at least once a week I'm working with multiple people.
Speaker 2: So let's take a step back and talk about what influenced you to enter into this
specific field.
Did you always want to be a medical researcher, or did you kind of have a different career
path when you were in high school or even in early college?
Speaker 1: I did not always want to be in this field.
Actually I didn't know this field existed.
So my father was an engineer and my mom with a therapist and so I kind of wanted to do
something that, might have followed what they were doing.
And just happened to see an article that kind of, it showed biomedical engineering and kind
of the combination between therapy and engineering and that got me hooked.
In my undergrad when you entered into the engineering program, you kind of followed
the, the, the track that you are on.
And so I started with a biomedical engineering track and my professor, just the first day
was like, ""If you ever want to get involved involved in the lab, come down and see what
we've got."" I went down and saw what some of the older students were doing and got involved
that way and ever since I've just enjoyed what I'm doing.
Yeah, engineering is difficult.
You have to answer problems that are sometimes abstract and that there may not even be an
answer to, and so it requires a problem solving sometimes you know.
You have to think outside the box and if you're not good at that or if you haven't really
you know, been open to that then, it can become challenging sometimes.
So on a day to day basis, I will come in and if we have a lab meeting I'll meet with my
other lab mates.
We'll talk about, kind of the progress we've made.
If we have any problems, and then I get to my work and that's mainly some form of a computer
coding or tracing muscles on a, from an MRI.
I was born in Johnson City, New York.
It's at the upstate New York.
Home to me was, lived on a hill with lots of acreage of woods and being able to run
around with my brother and you know just kind of the, explorer and you know get dirty.
I think we're at the, the point where technology can help us answer a lot of questions that
we wouldn't have been able to answer before.
And now we're starting to answer, ask those questions, and I think you give this field
10, 15 years and we're going to be able to use computer simulations to predict the outcome
of different therapy, therapies.
We're gonna be able to, possibly look at different medical images and be able to determine you
know, what type of therapy would be best suit that person without even having them come
into, you know come into a research lab.
I think there's a lot of growth in the technology, the technology and in the you know, medical
use of the science.
Success is making a difference it's you know, when you see people come in through the lab
or through the, the clinic, each person has their own you know, disability.
And if you can help one person you know, if your entire career just helps one person,
to me that's, that's a success.
Just think outside the box, think about you know, what you're learning and how it can
apply to not just your field or you know, if there's questions you, you just don't know
the answer to.
Don't be afraid to try to investigate why, you and you might not get the answer right
away but after that's part of the, that's part of the fun is trying to figure it out
and trying to solve the problems.
And it could be little things, but you know if you're asking the questions, you know and
trying to find the answers then I think that's gonna help you in this field."