Mia Bennett, a biomedical engineering student in her senior year at UMass Amherst, plans to pursue a career in clinical research alongside clinical practice. So, when she heard about an opportunity to conduct research with a faculty member at UMass Chan Medical School, she jumped at the chance.

The Bridging Engineering and Medicine (BEAM) program—one of many pathways through which undergraduates in the UMass Amherst College of Engineering can participate in research—offers a unique opportunity for biomedical engineering students to engage with real-world medical problems through research in an experiential, clinical setting. UMass Amherst partners with UMass Chan Medical School on this initiative, which is administered through the support of the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS). 

“I believe very strongly that engineering and medicine belong together,” says Bennett, originally from Middleborough, Mass. “This was the perfect opportunity for me.”

The program, which began in fall 2023, works to forge cross-campus collaborations in order to develop engineering technologies that will benefit patient care. According to Rachael Sirianni, program director and professor and vice chair of research in neurosurgery at UMass Chan, BEAM provides training and mentorship for undergraduates, along with access to translationally oriented research opportunities. This allows students to explore possible career paths of interest and develop skills and confidence working in different types of professional settings.

To date, about 45 students have taken part in the BEAM program. Students' participation in BEAM occurs through three different pathways, with some students taking part in more than one. The first pathway is known as “senior design,” a year-long capstone course that all UMass Amherst biomedical engineering students complete, during which they work in teams to develop an engineering solution to a real-world problem. Select student teams complete their senior design through the BEAM program, serving the role of an engineering firm with a UMass Chan faculty member as their “client.”

“Student teams work independently to innovate and come up with a novel, creative solution,” says Sam Wojda, lecturer and undergraduate program director of biomedical engineering at UMass Amherst. “They receive intermittent guidance and feedback from their ‘client’ at Chan. This is their foray into the real working world, and they get exposure to navigating a different kind of professional environment at the medical school.”

The second way through which UMass students can engage with BEAM is through an independent study. This pathway involves a much closer mentoring relationship, in which students visit the Chan campus regularly and receive about nine hours per week of mentoring over the course of a semester. They conduct research addressing a specific medical problem, test a hypothesis, and receive training in research skills and techniques, such as wet lab research and data analysis. “At the end, they produce a final report with the products of that research,” says Sirianni, who is also adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at UMass Amherst. “We find that independent study experiences often lead students to engage more with research in the future.”

Finally, students may apply for a funded summer internship through BEAM. This highly competitive opportunity sees students working 40 hours per week for 10 weeks over the summer. They engage in scientific research, receive training, and contribute to laboratory activities alongside all the other permanent lab members. Participants attend weekly didactic sessions, addressing topics such as responsible research conduct, data display, research funding opportunities, scientific storytelling, and career pathways, followed by discussion. These sessions also help students prepare to give a final presentation on their research at the end of the summer.

Bennett first participated in BEAM through the summer internship program, where she was paired with a UMass Chan pulmonologist, Dr. Mayuko Ito Fukunaga, on research related to the delivery of health care.

“We know there’s a large gap between people who are considered high risk for lung cancer and those who actually go in for screening,” Bennett explains. “This research is focused on assessing a new survey method to determine if it would be effective at catching those patients who are slipping through the cracks, and hopefully increasing the likelihood that they are screened for lung cancer.”

Bennett has gone on to work on a senior design team project with Sirianni and to do an independent study through BEAM in the lab of Dr. Li Li, which studies RNA therapeutics, during the 2024–2025 academic year.

“The environment in a medical school graduate program is completely different than the environment in an undergraduate program,” says Bennett. “It was very intimidating at first, but BEAM really helps demystify graduate research.

“Though the BEAM students all work independently, we got to sit down together for a few hours each week and learn about the inner workings of graduate research, such as different career pathways, funding opportunities, and publications. It was a great learning experience on those things that aren’t necessarily focused on in an undergraduate setting,” she adds. “And having the experience of working in a professional environment was really invaluable in gaining transferable skills that will stick with me.”

While, thus far, only students in UMass Amherst’s biomedical engineering program have participated in the BEAM program, Sirianni and Wojda hope to find sustainable funding sources in order to grow the program in the future. “We would like to engage more departments at UMass Amherst, and also continue growing our engagement with partners at UMass Lowell and Dartmouth,” says Sirianni.

In addition, CCTS at Chan and the Institute for Applied Life Sciences at UMass Amherst will co-host a cross-campus research symposium this summer, featuring research talks by BEAM participants and a career fair with local employers. They also hope to establish a cross-campus seminar series, featuring Amherst and Chan faculty members discussing basic and translationally oriented clinical research, to facilitate more cross-campus dialogue.

“We’re looking at many different ways to improve the connections between our two campuses,” Sirianni notes.

This story was originally published in March 2025.