{"id":19243,"date":"2023-11-29T15:48:44","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T20:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=19243"},"modified":"2024-01-05T09:17:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-05T14:17:14","slug":"improving-medical-care-on-many-fronts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2023\/11\/improving-medical-care-on-many-fronts\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving Medical Care on Many Fronts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Erick<\/a>
Erick Rocher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In middle school, Erick Rocher watched a friend fight cancer. The experience proved formative. \u201cThere was no doubt I wanted to someday work to improve medical care,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Now a senior biomedical engineering<\/a> major, Rocher is immersing himself in wide-ranging research, from improving surgical outcomes and innovating training for robotic surgery to harnessing nanotechnology to deliver better cancer treatment.<\/p>\n

His efforts have been recognized\u2014and rewarded\u2014with funding from key organizations. In June, he was among four Hopkins students (selected from a national pool of more than 5,000) to earn a Goldwater Scholarship, which honors students committed to pursuing research careers. In August, he joined 68 undergraduates from across the country receiving a scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese scholarships enable me to pursue my research interests at JHU,\u201d says Rocher, who also received a JHU Provost\u2019s Undergraduate Research Award<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a first-year student, Rocher joined a student team focused on reducing the surgical time for cataract surgery and improving patient outcomes. \u201cWe did a deep investigation into the consequences of temperature on cataract surgery in parallel with prototyping a device to control it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The team filed a patent on the device and founded ThermOptik LLC, with Rocher as chief research officer. \u201cRecently, I stepped up to the CEO role while continuing to push our research forward,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He concurrently leads a student design team that developed SimMetric, a software package aimed at enhancing coaching provided by robotic surgery simulators through the processing of surgical training data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith people like Erick, only the highest mountain will do. That is why he chose to lead in the creation of a powerful tool to help train future surgeons,\u201d says Hopkins surgeon Hien Nguyen, associate medical director of the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design<\/a> (CBID) and clinical mentor for SimMetric.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Rocher conducts cancer immunotherapy research at the School of Medicine<\/a> in the labs of Jordan Green<\/a> and Joel Sunshine<\/a>. His team is using polymers to form nanoparticles designed to trigger a targeted immune response against tumors.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt JHU, my passion for biomedical engineering has only deepened the more I\u2019ve learned,\u201d says Rocher, who volunteers as an EMT with Hopkins Emergency Response Organization<\/a> (HERO) and intends to pursue a MD\/PhD. \u201cHopkins has an incredible ecosystem that is ideal for the kind of multidisciplinary collaboration needed to operate on the cutting edge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In middle school, Erick Rocher watched a friend fight cancer. The experience proved formative. \u201cThere was no doubt I wanted to someday work to improve medical care,\u201d he says. Now a senior biomedical engineering major, Rocher is immersing himself in wide-ranging research, from improving surgical outcomes and innovating training for robotic surgery to harnessing nanotechnology…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":19301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students","issue-winter-2024"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nImproving Medical Care on Many Fronts - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read about what drives Erick Rocher to improve medical care while pursuing research at Johns Hopkins University.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2023\/11\/improving-medical-care-on-many-fronts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Improving Medical Care on Many Fronts - 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