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CUE 2004

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
Student Profile: Helen Simms

Helen Simms

For Helen Simms, chemical and biological engineering is the place where medicine and engineering come together, the field that combines the two things she loves most.

As the first person in her family to attend college, Simms majored in chemical engineering at the University of Virginia. She then worked for several years at DuPont, where she did research and development in polyester film coatings for the food packaging industry.

"It was interesting, but I felt like I wanted to learn more," she says about her decision to attend graduate school. A packaging client in Golden, Colo., led her to visit Boulder, where she felt right at home with the outdoor lifestyle the community is so well known for. She also was impressed with the research going on in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Simms is now in her second year at CU-Boulder, where she is designing microfluidic devices for high-throughput cell studies. The devices, which are just barely over 2 square inches in size, make it possible to test cellular response to growth factors and a variety of other reagents. "I hope that this will help to speed the studies of tissue engineering, which are now in the early stages," she says.

After she completes her Ph.D., Simms hopes to continue her research somewhere in connection with a hospital: "I"d like to help improve people's quality of life," she says.