On August 25, 2021, Utah’s Biomedical Engineering and Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute alumnus, Dr. Ruth Klepfer, was inducted into the Medtronic Bakken Society. The Bakken Society is an honorary society that recognizes employees of Medtronic for their outstanding contributions to Medtronic’s technical or scientific progress, and is the highest honor for technical contributions to the Medtronic organization.
We had the opportunity to speak with Ruth about her experiences in Utah’s Biomedical Engineering program and how it influenced her life and career in the time beyond.
How did your Utah BME education prepare you for your career?
Dr. Klepfer: “The Utah graduate program did a great job of preparing me for my career in several ways. First it provided a broad and solid engineering foundation through the course work of the first year. This is important because just because you are hired into one specific engineering discipline, it is important to be able to understand your colleagues from other disciplines and sometimes you might even be asked to branch out into adjacent areas. Your value as an employee is enhanced by the breadth of the different ways in which you can contribute.
Another area in which Utah taught some particularly valuable skills was in the focus on communication, both written and oral. It is nearly impossible to overstate the importance of communication skills in nearly every career out there. You can sometimes find roles where you don’t need to communicate well, but you will always have greater impact and influence in your role if can communicate effectively. One obvious example was the comprehensive written and oral exams at the end of the first year. However, these skills were developed through the course work required in nearly every course in the department.
The BME department also did a great job of connecting students with projects in which the department was collaborating with various industry partners. This makes the practicality of your work very tangible, is incredibly motivating and also helps provide valuable experience that not only looks good on a resume, but helps the student understand better the challenges involved in bringing biomedical solutions to the market.”
How do you see biomedical engineering producing qualified candidates for careers in the medtech industry?
Dr. Klepfer: “In my experience, most BME programs do a good job of preparing people for a career in medtech. They do this by providing a solid foundation of engineering principles and then teach the application of those principles in the difficult space of physiology and biology. I think the approach of having tracks or areas of focus such as bio-electrical or bio-mechanical engineering is helpful. It allows people to dig in deeper in areas of interest or passion. In my experience, people with a BME degree tend to be more than just the technical expert – they seem to have the right skills to become leaders a bit more readily than other disciplines might. I think this has to do with 1) the type of people who are drawn toward BME – it is a demanding degree and people who want to work in this field are very motivated and 2) BME is, by definition, cross-function or cross-disciplinary. Being successful in your studies means you have already managed to bridge understanding of multiple disciplines and once you are able to communicate that understanding, it really allows you to contribute in a meaningful way in medtech.”
What do you like most about your job?
Dr. Klepfer: “There are many things that I like about my job, but probably what I like best is that it allows me to continue to learn new things throughout my career. And I don’t just mean I learn something that I didn’t know before because I wasn’t taught it, I mean I learn new things that the world didn’t know yet. It is the thrill of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge forward, the satisfaction of knowing a subject deeply and seeing that knowledge help drive toward something that will help hundreds to thousands of people. On top of that, I work with amazing and impressive people who make it fun. One other thing I’ve always enjoyed about my job is that it allowed me to nudge the stereotypes around women and their capabilities in STEM careers. As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve also had the opportunity to encourage and foster the careers of many impressive and talented women and it is a real joy to see more women leveraging their skills and talents as leaders in biomedical engineering.”
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Congratulations to Utah alumna, Dr. Ruth Klepfer, Medtronic Bakken Society member, from the Utah Department of Biomedical Engineering!