Elisa Bravo was born and raised in Miami, Florida where she grew up speaking both English and Spanish. She chose to pursue engineering upon realizing the high-level of creativity that it requires. She always appreciated the artistic beauty of mathematics and found engineering as an excellent way to further explore that relationship. One mentor who helped Bravo get to that spot was the boss she had while working as a summer intern at the FIU Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, Carolina Valdes-Lora. Throughout the internship, they would talk about Bravo’s future plans and spoke of the same love for art and design they had for different artists. She wanted to integrate her love for art and design with her love for mathematics which led Bravo to engineering.
Summer 2018, Bravo participated as a REM in the Ekinci Lab at Boston University, expanding her knowledge in microfluidics by manipulating fluids to further understand the best boundary conditions for the vasculature of a cardiac patch. This process involves a lot of close observation and attention to detail.
Summer 2019, Bravo worked in the Nanometer Scale Engineering Laboratory, once again under Dr. Kamil Ekinci and mentored by Mustafa Cagatay Karakan at Boston University. Underpinning her work was the understanding that electrodes are used extensively in microfluidics in order to measure specific analytes electrochemically. Traditional methods of fabrication of electrodes onto microfluidic devices are costly and much more difficult. 3D liquid metal electrodes can be created by designing the microfluidic device with electrode channels. Then placing Gallium-based metals into the holes of the channels and melting them over a hot plate allowing the liquid metal to coat the channel, directly touching the fluidic channel enhancing read out. To finalize her research for the summer of 2019, Bravo explored which dimensions constricted the flow of liquid metal to allow direct sensing contact with the fluidic channel.
Outside of the lab, Bravo loved exploring Boston. She’s fascinated by the historical context of all the buildings and appreciates the variety of art she has seen. Bravo says that the program truly has something for everyone. “I think that if you’ve never done research before, it’ll be super beneficial to you. You’ll figure out if you want to continue to dip your foot into the world that is research. But even to those who have done research, it’s still a great experience, the labs are great, and the people are wonderful.”
Elisa got her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering at Florida International University. She then went on to pursue her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan.
