Through artificial blood, sweat and tears Agathe Solans

Thump Thump. No sound had ever sounded better to my ears, although through a balloon encased in a beaker, it resembled more closely to "woosh woosh". For the past five months, I had been working on the model of an artificial heart for my independent research project. To compliment my model, I interviewed several heart surgeons and specialists at UCSF and created a medical journal with imagined case studies illustrating the theoretical benefits my artificial heart could bring to its patients. Through blood (the artificial kind), sweat and tears (those were real), my model was finally able to beat on its own, through coding and programmable elements.

I felt an overwhelming sense of pride, not just for having succeeded but also for what this model represented. With an artificial heart, it is possible to provide for individuals on transplant waiting lists waiting years for donors and personalize the organ to fit the individual. Of course, "succeeded" was a relative term. Staring at the tubes roughly connected together with rubber bands and the jumble of machines purring in front of me, my model was far from transplantable. But it was a start, a seed waiting to grow.

That seed also took root inside me. Although my project was...