The college’s EnQuest Program, a summer camp for high school students, was featured in a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently. EnQuest offers two camp experiences for high school students with the goal of stimulating interest in engineering and STEM fields.
Teens were exposed to a variety of research, including testing whether and when mice bones will break under tension. They used special equipment to measure how much force the bones can withstand before breaking or cracking. They then compared that data to samples of polymers, materials that can be used inside the body.
The bone healing project arose from combining the bone expertise of associate professor Priya Premnath and the computational modeling skills of associate professor Mahsa Dabagh.
The newspaper story also quoted Jacqueline Barlas, a UWM junior studying biomedical engineering and chemistry, who attended the EnQuest camp when she was in high school and has returned as a counselor every summer since.
“The camp is so important because it teaches collaboration with people that you don’t really know,” said Barlas. “That will be a big part of college and that will be a big part of when you go out into industry.”