Starting the Research Project

When I was first introduced to this research project and told to pick something related to the biomedical field with a focus on concepts rather than mechanisms, my first idea was diabetes. I have been curious about this disease ever since I was young. In elementary school, I had several friends who all suffered from type I diabetes and I remember being curious about the nature about this disease and why there was no cure. It seemed very unpleasant to me that my friends had to constantly prick their fingers and monitor what they ate in order to regulate their blood sugar constantly. Diabetes was one of the first chronic illnesses I witnessed and this is probably the reason that it came to mind so quickly, as it has been in my mind ever since I was young. My initial questions were about the nature of the disease, the link between type I and type II, and the different types of treatments. This, however, was much to broad a topic. I also found out that the prompt was changed and that the new directions were to focus on a biomedical topic and develop a machine-centralized idea that viewed something from an engineering viewpoint. I decided to stick with diabetes but move towards different types of treatments. I did a small amount of research about the different levels of treatments, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. These techniques differed from “pumps” that can deliver on-demand insulin to inhaled insulin to more experimental techniques such as artificial pancreas. However, even the topic of treatments seems too broad; I think I’m going to have to focus on one specific type of treatment or one level of treatment. I learned about research being conducted to try and create islet cells out of stem cells that could be transplanted into a patient; I’m going to look at this subject more carefully and hopefully decide soon on exactly what my research project is going to be on.