Heather Buckner

I want to design assistive devices and brain-computer interfaces, the hardware that helps people regain mobility after injury, illness, or aging. Long term I see myself either at a medical device company doing R&D or starting one focused on patients the industry tends to overlook, including older adults, women, and people whose anatomies fall outside the design defaults.

I am planning to apply to graduate programs in biomedical engineering or neural engineering, with a focus on neural interface design, prosthetic control systems, or rehabilitation robotics. I am especially interested in labs doing clinical-translation work where the device actually reaches a patient, not just a journal. Open to MS or PhD depending on how my undergrad research goes.

Building and tinkering with mechanical projects, mentoring younger STEM students, baking, watching robotics competition footage, tennis, hiking around the Bay Area, reading science fiction.