User:Rwd7

Reid W. D'Amico

Basic Information

Reid D'Amico is a student at Duke University studying Biomedical Engineering. Reid was born in Maryland but spent the majority of his life growing up in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Before college, Reid was involved with many different extracurricular activities:

Reid was a finalist at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for four years. He received awards ranging from the state to the international level. Before college, Reid developed a way to harness the electrical energy given off by the interaction between plants and bacteria in the soil (See Microbial Fuel Cells). In his Junior year, Reid also developed a Hydroelectric Turbine that harnessed the energy of the fluctuating tides off of the low country of South Carolina.

Reid also spent his time in high school involved with Student Government. Reid was the president of his Freshman and Sophomore classes, Vice President of the Body and ended his high school career as President of the Student Body.

At Duke

Reid has been a student researcher at Duke since April 2012. He initially started off working at the Center for Human Genetics, where he analyzed clinical trials of a new drug for Pompe Disease.

Currently, Reid is working for Duke Medicine's Orthopaedic Research Laboratories. His first project aims to characterize the epigenome of Adipose Derived Stem Cells. His second project aims to find a way to engineer a biomaterial that would be more conducive for growing tendons form these stem cells.

Ultimately, Reid would like to apply what he has learned and focus on regenerative medicine techniques through a pulmonary model. Specifically, Reid would like to work on engineering therapies and approaches for diseases like Cystic fibrosis.

Engineering Grand Challenge

Reverse Engineering the brain is one of the Engineering Grand Challenges. As a prospective Biomedical Engineer, this topic was the most interesting to me and would be fascinating to study in further detail. A link to learn more is as follows: Reverse Engineering the Brain, Roberta Friedman, PhD, Biomedical Computation Review, Spring 2009, September 19, 2011 (Reverse Engineering the Brain). (2011)

MATLAB Demonstrations

My favorite MATLAB example was the Loma Prieta Earthquake demonstration. This allowed me to see the real life application of programming. (2011)