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Notable Knights

Zainab sits, smiling at the camera

Zainab Al Tamimi

Biomedical Engineering Major

Zainab Al Tamimi is a senior studying Biomedical Engineering on a pre-med and bio-materials track. Over the summer Al Tamimi had an internship with the National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST. NIST is an agency that works to develop standards for various industries in the United States to ensure quality and advance the United States’ global industrial competitiveness.

 

Al Tamimi explained how the institute works stating, “NIST gives the measurement sciences or metrology for the government. So, whatever we study they aren’t regulating but other agencies like the FDA would take the information compiled by the NIST and create those regulations.” For her internship Al Tamimi focused on what is known as Drop on Demand Point of Care Pharmaceutical Manufacturing for Precision Medicine, which is the process of using a printer to print drugs and give point of care sites the ability to make their own drugs. Al Tamimi said “When we’re making these medications, we want to make these medications personalized to you. Personalized either to your body wight or to your needs. For example, creating tapering doses for highly addictive drugs to prevent abuse. You want to be able to use a printer for something like this because then you can just make the concentration large to smaller very quickly using the printer.” The project also tested the accuracy of this method for medications that are only affective in certain ranges as well as with larger molecules and vaccines.

 

Al Tamimi’s role was to quantify the drugs and making sure these results were accurate and later by characterizing these drugs. Al Tamimi shared how ÂÒÂ×ÊÓƵ gave her the opportunity to build her skills before the internship saying, “In the BME program I got to learn about mechanical engineering as well as bioengineering, which translated to my ability to perform the mechanical tests needed for my internship.” Al Tamimi continued stating, “I also learned about different ways to analyze these medications that I was able to use during my internship. Being familiar with things like infrared and mass spectrometry made me familiar enough with that and with the internship I got to operate the instruments and see how they worked.”

 

Al Tamimi said that their internship prepared them to become more serious about her future education. She shared her final thoughts stating, “My takeaway was, no matter what experiences you get, focus on the technical expertise, the skills that you gather, because those are the things that will stick.”