All The Way From UCL, Meet Our President! - September 2018

This month's Indonesian showcase features Cyrus Tanade, a Biomed from UCL and this year's Permias president, Gideon Setiawan. Come check out our featured picks for this month’s showcase!

Cyrus Tanade

Major: Biomedical Engineering (M.Eng) at University College London (UCL)

Reason:

I am studying Biomedical Engineering (M.Eng) at University College London (UCL) and I am doing a year abroad program at Georgia Tech. I was originally pursuing a career in Medicine, but when I shadowed a renowned neurosurgeon as part of my studies I developed a fascination for the symbiotic relationship between Medicine and Engineering. In terms of my natural aptitude for the sciences, I have always excelled more at Physics and Mathematics than I ever did in Biology, and this goes to also show why a career in Engineering is ultimately the more suitable choice.

Why Georgia Tech: Gatech’s BME program is in many ways similar to UCL’s, but Gatech offers me the chance to widen my perspective on my major. UCL’s BME program has a distinct focus on Medical Imaging and Electronics, as it is the leading institution in Europe for these aspects of BME. However, after two years of being exposed to the cutting-edge research done in this field, particularly in Dr. Paul Beard’s revolutionary Photoacoustic Imaging research, I became convinced that I do not want to specialize in Imaging. Gatech’s program piqued my interest, as the program structure for an exchange student allows me to choose courses without much restriction, and the selection of courses also cover much more breadth than back in London. As such, I have chosen courses to expand the breadth of my skills to public health, the business aspect of medical device development, and even on biomimetics. In short, I chose Gatech as it would best complete my undergraduate experience!

Biggest Achievement in Life:

My biggest achievement in life came at the very end of my second year at UCL. Before I describe this accomplishment, I want to make it clear that it wasn’t my individual work that culminated in this success, but rather the hard-work of my peers as well. UCL’s How to Change the World programme, the capstone of the Faculty of Engineering’s Integrated Engineering Programme, provided me with an invaluable opportunity to work within a multidisciplinary team that includes a variety of members with different discipline-specific knowledge and expertise. My team worked as an international consultancy to formulate innovative solutions to meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7: to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. From my electronics knowledge, I invented a trampoline park that could theoretically generate enough electricity to fully charge an iPhone in just 49 seconds. Our solution was specifically targeted to create employment for the indigenous Ugandan youth, have long-term educational benefits, provide a stable source of funding to the primary school, and even eclipse solar energy in terms of the humanitarian impact. My team was ultimately awarded the first place for our solution amongst 14 teams that also worked on the same problem and was also awarded as the runner-up to UCL’s Humanitarian Institute Award. The range of skills we acquired as a team is what I believe was the biggest accomplishment and being the only team to win two awards out of 125 teams is a testament to this.

Others:

Besides academia, I am very active in sports. Since a very young age, I have been training intensively in Golf and even competed around Bandung. However, as my studies got busier, I opted for more ‘active’ sports that would benefit me in terms of health. I now consistently play Tennis weekly, and I am a hardcore Roger Federer fan. I have been rooting for him ever since his 17th major win at Wimbledon in 2012, throughout his major drought, and his current career resurgence. I look forward to playing Tennis and Badminton with all of you throughout the academic year!

Gideon Setiawan

Major: Industrial Systems and Engineering.

Reason:

Initially I wanted to be a Civil Engineer, but because I failed so hard at Engineering Dynamics, I switched to IE. It turned out well because now I don't really have to do anything related to physics and actually statistics, probability, and data analysis happen to be excellent tools to solve very complex problems - also very cool problems. #1 program in the country for 20+ years.

Why Georgia Tech:

Very good school, probably has the best IE faculty in the country, and excellent industry connections. People here are very agreeable as well. I like Atlanta as a city very much as well.

Biggest Achievement in Life:

This is a difficult question. Probably getting into Georgia Tech.