University of Rochester - Biomedical Engineering

URochester students aren't waiting until after graduation to build something real.

Last school year, 116 student businesses began at the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Rochester—ranging from medical devices to drone-powered building management to AI tools for customer service. Several earned top recognition at the New York Business Plan Competition and will continue to develop their ventures beyond campus.

🔗 Read more about how our students are learning by launching: bit.ly/4g2ggxG

Congratulations, Jane! We're proud to see one of our Biomedical Engineering majors applying a user-centered mindset to such an impactful project. Great work!👏

Jane Randrianarisoa initially thought user experience design was about making things look better. Her internship at River Campus Libraries taught her otherwise. 😍

Jane is the UX Design Intern this summer at Edward G. Miner Library—one of five undergraduates in Libraries' 100% philanthropy-funded internship program—and her project is deceptively consequential: redesigning the History of Medicine website at the Edward G. Miner Library. 🩺 The site serves an unusually broad and high-stakes community: undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, clinicians, historians, and external researchers from institutions across the country who depend on these collections for their work. If they can't find what they need, the knowledge might as well not exist.

Jane's job is to make sure it does. 💛💙

Her process has been rigorous—evaluating the existing site, reviewing UX literature, conducting user surveys and interviews, and learning tools like Figma, Qualtrics, and UX Metrics along the way. But the most significant shift has been conceptual.

"One thing that surprised me is how much UX design is rooted in empathy," she says. "Good design isn't about making something look better—it's about understanding people's needs and creating an experience that genuinely works for them. I realized that UX is about empathy, not aesthetics." 😯

What makes the library context distinct, Jane argues, is the weight of the mission itself. "Libraries are not just content providers, they are stewards of knowledge, and their mission is to preserve, organize, and make information accessible over time. That means design decisions are not only about usability, but also about how information is structured, represented, and discovered within a larger archival system."

That's a sophisticated understanding of information architecture—and she developed it in ten weeks, as an undergraduate intern. 👏

JOIN US FOR THE FINAL SESSION!
Professional Development Series for summer researchers

Session #8: Conference-going 101
Presented by: Dr. Emily Rendek and a panel of undergrad and grad students
Dewey Hall, Room 1-101
-How do you identify conferences to attend?
-How do you get funded?
-What is conference etiquette?
-How do you network?

Open to all undergraduate researchers on campus this summer. No pre-registration required.
This last session will be followed by pizza and board games from 5:30-6:30. All attendees are invited to join, immediately following the session. Based on the weather forecast, it is looking like we will be indoors in the Lam bizHub in Carol Simon Hall 1-219.

R.S.V.P. for pizza https://ow.ly/ixAt50ZtnQL

Undergraduate students, it’s your time to shine.

BMES 2026 Undergraduate Research Abstract submissions are now open. Share your research with the biomedical engineering community for the opportunity to present your work as either a poster or podium presentation at the BMES 2026 Annual Meeting in Orlando.

🗓 Submission Deadline: August 3, 2026
Submit your abstract: https://hubs.la/Q04p_Nlt0