This week I had toe opportunity to sit down with my P.I. Dr. Nate Crosby and ask him the really important questions on how he got his start in the exciting field of Biomedical Engineering research.
Dr. Crosby got his start in the field of Biomedical Engineering at Bucknell where he completed his undergraduate career. He started research his Junior year of his undergraduate career and has not stopped since. He went on to the university of Pennsylvania where he got his Phd. in Bio Engineering after working with the spinal chord and structural changes in the spine due to spinal cord stimulation. He is now a post-doc here at Duke researching pain and and how it can be inhibited through Spinal Cord Stimulation. Through his entire research career Dr. Crosby’s goals have stood firm in that he wants to do interesting research only if there is a clinical application for the work that he is doing. Without the clinical application he doesn’t find as much interest in the subject.
Before coming a doctor Dr. Crosby was a teaching assistant at the university of Pennsylvania for two year where he mentored seniors in a senior design lab. He didn’t work on every project but he oversaw all the projects. However, Dr. Crosby also did his own research. When being asked the question of what his favorite part of research was, Dr. Crosby immediately replied that he loved getting the answer to the question. He loves solving the problems at hand and seeing all the pieces of the puzzle that is research fit together.
Even though Dr. Crosby loves research he would still change some things about how science is done today. Dr. Crosby would make money easier to come by for the important research instead of just the research that big companies think is important. He would also increase transparency in the research community because knowledge is to be shared well instead of hidden within poorly written papers.
All in all, Dr. Crosby is a great research through in through, but he still has had some disasters in the lab and some embarrassing moments at conferences. Let’s just say that he might have broken a very expensive piece of equipment called Power Lab by injecting too much current into the device. He might have not even been blamed for the incident because the damage couldn’t be traced back to anyone. Also, Dr. Crosby might have been a presenter at a conference where he was on stage for ten minutes of technical difficulties while everyone in the audience was giving him the stink eye for ruining the schedule. These are only two hypothetical scenarios involving Dr. Crosby.
Some advice that Dr. Crosby has for a young researcher is,
1) Make sure getting a Phd is necessary for what you want to do in life before you actually go out and get it because you don’t always need more school. Sometimes more school will disqualify you from getting a job.
2) Find questions that interest you and take time to explore your options it is okay not to know right away.
Thank you Dr. Crosby for the good advice and taking time out of your schedule to let me interview you.
