My name is Oleksandra and I am a senior undergraduate student at the University of Central Florida, where I am currently studying Biomedical Sciences and Psychology. Ever since immigrating to the United States, I have been set on pursuing a career field that will both be intellectually and socially stimulating, which will allow me to integrate my passion for helping others through biomedicine and healthcare, specifically focused towards underrepresented demographics. As such, I enjoy volunteering in community health clinics and in the emergency room, assisting in teaching at UCF, mentoring other students in the Biomedical Sciences department, and pursuing independent undergraduate research projects, which are all opportunities that have aided my growth as an individual. Outside of academia, I am interested in visual arts, design, and videography, and hope to integrate those creative aspects of my character into future research and developmental projects throughout my career.
Earning the BACE credential was a major foundational stepping stone in my academic path, as the training process introduced me to biotechnological methods at a very early age. As such, I was able to integrate my knowledge from the BACE credential to further pursue Biomedical Research Investigator (BRI) certification, which allowed me to perform undergraduate research at my university non-invasively on human subjects. Because of this, I was able to participate in research at the Biomedical Acoustics Research Laboratory (BARL) at UCF, drafting and executing my own independent research study which looked to correlate accessible heart-rate monitoring devices to the predisposition for cardiovascular issues as based on tracking heart rate during stages of sleep and during daily activity. Due to my BACE credential, I was able to integrate my knowledge of biotechnology into my bioengineering research and was able to take steps towards completing my first-ever research study.
As an undergraduate research assistant, daily duties include communicating with my research team and mentor about progress, doing extensive literature reviews and academic research on biomedical and biotechnical concepts, drafting plans and writing up research proposals, communicating with professors and/or other academic departments to cross-reference information, performing and running trials of preliminary research procedures, scouting volunteers and valuable participants and performing official research procedures, interpreting and analyzing acquired data, and compiling information from procedures and data for communication towards my research mentors and residing physicians.
I enjoy being able to use a variety of bioengineering equipment and to be able to draft unique research proposals that target the use of accessible devices towards cardiovascular disease prevention.
