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Hi, my name is Weston Clifford and welcome to my page. I grew up in Broadview Heights, a Suburb of Cleveland. I love to play soccer, and in my senior year of High School I decided to play volleyball. What a great decision because I  learned volleyball is a really technical sport, but I had so much fun learning to play. I am majoring in Biological Engineering, and I was a part of Green Engineering Scholars. Growing up I always took more challenging classes like AP Biology and Chemistry, along with a plethora of other hard courses in high school which offered some inspiration for what I wanted to do. I have always had an appreciation for science, and I’m interested in doing research in the future. Good thing I chose to go to The Ohio State University with all these research opportunities in too many subjects to count! Now being in college, I have basically continued the same interests in my beloved sports while expanding my knowledge into how the world works. I have always thought like a scientist and been more inclined to those subject areas so majoring in engineering has certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone. I do appreciate what I am learning because otherwise, I would have never picked up a book on fluid flow, statics, or thermodynamics. This major has opened up my mind and made these subjects more easy to grasp (while still not being the best at physics or calculus). 

Hello, my name is Weston Clifford, and I am a student at The Ohio State University. I am majoring in biological engineering and my goal is to conduct research in industry after college. I have worked as a lab assistant for the general chemistry prep lab and as a research assistant studying cancer. Both these experiences trained me to learn safe laboratory techniques and how to handle dangerous chemicals or biological substances.

I see an engineer’s goal as using their skills to advance life through new tools and growing knowledge. It will be important to keep ethics on my mind depending on the career path I choose; whether it be the hard moral questions that come with my interest in the field of molecular engineering or the tough decisions in trade off when impacting the environment. As well as needing ethics to make the best decisions over my career, I must also be the best lifelong learner. I value the idea that humans are not perfect, so inherently we are always able to learn from our mistakes. This means it is important to focus on learning after getting out of university and an effort to continue learning in different ways will have to be made.

After graduating with my BS in Biological Engineering, I hope to start working in industry. This will be the first step in becoming a reliable engineer. I will learn the ways around the office and grow the knowledge I learned from obtaining my degree in training.  I am interested in going to graduate school, but I would like to get an experience in industry first. It will allow me to make a better choice in what area to master in based on my growing interests. As of right now, my career goals are to do research and help cure a genetic disease. I hope to be a multidisciplinary engineer with knowledge in sustainability as well. To advance along a career path like the one I desire, keeping up with the latest technical and/or professional engineering knowledge is essential. This means previous technical and/or professional engineering knowledge must be taken with skepticism to lay the foundation for new ideas. Current strategies to do this I learned from the classroom. Taking notes in lecture from a professor is a great way to learn but is bettered when the topics are also looked up in other textbooks. Having multiple sources is a valuable and effective way to evaluate information. Judging the quality of information also stands vital out of the classroom.

Being a student and learning at The Ohio State University has led me to invaluable experiences not in school. I have been rewarded for my curiosity as a scientist to have had the opportunity to do research on a cancer project. I have also been rewarded for my drive as an engineer to have had an internship underneath a quality engineer. My research required me to gain a lot of knowledge about cancer, something I had not learned much about in my curriculum. I searched through many databases for articles to read and also read sources of the papers I was reading. This was to make sure I knew where different knowledge was coming from depending on the cells I was reading about. I also got to explore learning in a professionally developmental way by joining the Biomedical Engineering Society and having an abstract selected for their yearly meeting. Staying in this professional society and/or joining others is one way I hope to stay engaged with my peers and open to other ideas to learn. Meetings like this are a great way to see where the progression of a field is heading. I would like continue in this path to get published myself assuming I can start or be of some groundbreaking projects. My internship was in a metal stamping plant so the mechanical engineering topics challenged me. The most important way to learn I realized was through mentoring. In tough areas of tolerances and CAD drawings, the senior engineer at the place I worked was the most helpful. Judging information from people with experience is a little easier to trust. With that senior engineer’s help, I was able to improve efficiency in quality checks on pieces because I questioned the words of the quality engineer in charge of me. I hope to keep this sense of skepticism and carry it forward as I learn throughout my career.

All engineers should have to think about the impacts of their work both globally and to society. The invention of the computer and internet completely revolutionized society and probably for the better. I only say probably because no one could predict all the side effects. A negative being the growing split between first and third world countries. When thinking about all the information at hand, should it be a human right to have internet access? Another example is the unforeseen consequence in the social manner of millennials and that would turn into a whole other debate on social media. My point is there are always unforeseen consequences to any work an engineer must do. I learned this mainly in a class called Sociology 3302. We studied the impacts of technologies. Technology not only has an impact on society but is also influenced by society. That cycle never ends and can be seen in something as simple as the bike. They were designed different for women and their skirts. Laws had to be changed to fit them into society safely. Another class where I learned to value the decisions I will have to make in the future is Engineering 1197.01, Green Engineering Scholars Seminar. I learned about the huge impact of food waste in there and how much money we could be saving. Let alone, the wasted food that should be going to impoverished families. We also learned much about sustainability and planting the right crops in correct climates. Another class where I learned a very useful and practical application of engineering decision was in FABE 3120, thermodynamics. My professor, Ann Christy, had us work on a semester long project where we had to design a mobile cooling system for the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. In making our design choices we had to consider all the people involved including customers, people who were funding, volunteers, and the nice people allowing the food bank to happen at a certain location or parking lot. My team tried to design the most efficient system which also cost the least. Efficiency in many types of systems was considered and seeing where we are pushing the limits versus where we can use some work like the car engine. The Earth’s resources need to be valued more and the pollution impact our choices have. As engineer’s this must be considered in order to be a quality professional with ethics.

Resume(Junior Year)-1l03txk

Attached above is a pdf of my resume for easier viewing purposes.