As the child of an Air Force officer, Ryan Yetishefsky grew up with a heightened awareness of the debilitating injuries affecting soldiers and veterans. Everything from amputations to PTSD “fundamentally change the way that people live,” he said.
So as an undergraduate at University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), he decided to focus on bioengineering, with the goal of graduating and finding a job in industry that could help those who have been injured.
But when he began conducting research in the lab of Asst. Prof. Sihong Wang, he realized that his goals had shifted. “I appreciated having the independence and autonomy to explore different research avenues in the lab,” he said. “I decided I wanted to continue on in academia.”
Not quite ready to join a PhD program, Yetishefsky instead enrolled in UChicago PME’s Master of Engineering program, where he focused on the bio- and immunoengineering track. There, he bolstered his knowledge of both bioengineering and materials, including polymer science and synthesis. “Even though I was on the bio- and immune track, I still took a lot of materials science courses,” he said. “That was one thing I loved about the program. It gave me the flexibility to take courses that were interesting to me and that I thought were useful for my research.”
He also stayed on in Wang’s lab, conducting research on conductive hydrogels—networks of hydrophilic conjugated polymers that can interface electronics with the body by closely mimicking the mechanical and electrical properties of tissue. “As electrodes, conductive hydrogels can ultimately give users, like injured veterans, better control of prosthetics by enhancing the interface between the prosthetic and the body,” he said. His research project involved investigating how to control the hydrogel’s structure through different processing methods and different compositions of materials.
More recently, he has been working on a project to use conductive hydrogels to develop a better neural ablation tool with renowned UChicago Medicine neurosurgeon Peter Warnke.
“I learned to balance my time between grad-level coursework and doing research, which was definitely challenging, but very rewarding when you can pull it off and be productive at both,” he said.
Outside of the classroom and lab, he still made time to golf and hang out with his former teammates on the UChicago soccer team, “but it has definitely mostly been being in the lab and doing coursework.”
His hard work has paid off: this fall, he will begin a PhD program in materials science at Rice University, which also has a neuroengineering initiative. “I’m hoping I can take everything I have learned about materials science and apply that towards neuroengineering and developing therapeutics for the brain,” he said.
After the PhD program, he hopes to find a job in industry, ideally interfacing electronics with the brain. “I think it could be a very, very powerful therapeutic in the future,” he said.
The Master of Engineering program was the jumpstart he needed to get on that career track, he said. “A lot of challenges in biology could be considered through a materials science lens,” he said. “The classes in the program really helped me learn how to apply lessons in materials science towards biological challenges.”