ASME Student Member Joshua Price Represents the Society as a W...

ASME Student Member Joshua Price Represents the Society as a W... ASME Student Member Joshua Price Represents the Society as a W... ASME Student Member Joshua Price Selected by the Society for This Years WISE ProgramASME student member Joshua Price had the chance to spend the summer in Washington, D.C., learning about the interaction of technology and public policy by serving as ASMEs intern in the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) program. Price is one of twelve third- and fourth-year engineering students who were selected by the participating engineering societies to take part in the nine-week summer internship program, which aims to educate the professions future leaders on the public policy process and encourage technical input in the legislative and regulatory policy-making process.Price, who will be graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in December with bachelors degrees in both mechanical engineering and molecular and cell biology, exp ects to begin applying for Ph.D. programs in mechanical and biomedical engineering this fall. He would ultimately like to pursue a career as a medical product entrepreneur, either starting a venture or joining an early-stage company within the next 10 years, he said. ASME student member Joshua Price served as ASMEs Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) intern this summer.Price saw the WISE internship with ASME as an opportunity to do something unrelated to his career path during his last summer in college. I elected to do the WISE program instead of a more traditional engineering internship to develop a first-hand understanding of how government operates, said Price, who notlageed that policy has been a longtime interest of his. I have had a fantastic experience and would highly recommend it to engineering students with an interest in policy. Through my WISE internship, Ive learned that steuerung is one of the activities that determines the role th at technology plays in the world.As part of their internship, Price and his fellow WISE interns are composing papers on a selected aspect of technology policy. Since Prices paper focuses on implantable medical device regulation and innovation, he has spent the summer meeting with biomedical experts from agencies and associations including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health, ASME and ANSI in order to learn the intricacies of the FDA regulation process and how the various stakeholders feel that process should change. For example, while the manufacturers of implantable medical devices would prefer FDA to approve devices as quickly as possible so they can efficiently bring new products to market, consumer rights groups seek to tighten regulations to ensure that only products proven to be safe in thorough clinical trials make it to the marketplace. Meanwhile, patient groups would like to have faster access to new treatments for their ailments, but wou ld still want the safety of these treatments to be guaranteed, Price said.My paper is focused on how standards, such as those created by ASME, play an important role in how the FDA reviews new implantable medical devices, particularly when they are deciding whether to allow clinical trials, Price said. I knew that ASME played an important role in developing industry standards, but I didnt know about the extensive process behind standards development and how important they are in government regulation. For example, the FDA actually tells medical device manufacturers to follow specific standards developed by ASME and other standards developing organizations. It makes their process more efficient and helps them ensure product safety and effectiveness.Price will present his paper, which will include recommendations about how the FDA and standards organizations can work together to speed the development of standards as new technologies evolve, before his fellow 2018 WISE interns, members of the WISE sponsor societies and invited guests on Aug. 2 at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. His paper will be available soon on http//wise-intern.org/journal/index.html.In addition to preparing their technology policy papers, the WISE interns also spent their time in Washington participating in more than a dozen meetings related to science and technology policy. During the meetings, which were held at locations including NASA headquarters, Rand Corporation and the State Department, the interns learned first-hand how much effort welches involved in developing new policy, including communicating with stakeholder groups, examining various policy alternatives, political maneuvering to ensure that policy is passed, and turning legislation into government procedures, Price said. The meetings were organized by Dr. Gil Brown from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who was this years WISE faculty member in residence. (Seated, left to right) James Bed nar, Zeyi Lin, Albert Mancilla, Raine Sagramsingh, Joshua Price, Alexandra Hsain, Victor Rodriguez, Christina Chen, Ishaan Dev, Colby Buehler, and (standing, far right) Alex Meier and Erik Olson. Image Caption Continued The 2018 class of WISE interns. Dr. Gil Brown (standing, second from left) was this years WISE faculty member in residence.Despite such a full schedule, Price was able to squeeze in a few other activities into his schedule this summer. One unquestionable highlight, he said, was attending one of the last Supreme Court sessions of the summer, during which the Justices ruled on the Trump v. Hawaii travel ban case. It was incredible to see the most powerful court in the country in action, laying down the law and fiercely arguing for what they believed to be right, he said. Price also had the opportunity to travel to New York on an ASME-sponsored trip to speak with bioengineering experts at ASME headquarters and meet with Dr. Dion Khodagholy, a professor of electrical eng ineering from Columbia University, to discuss implantable neural devices.Reflecting on his experience, Price said he only wished it had been lengthier. If I could have had more time in D.C., I would have gone to more events and met with more people not immediately relevant to my policy topic, he said. There is an astounding amount of activity in Washington, such as near-daily Congressional hearings, events by think tanks, and public engagement sessions at federal departments, not to mention more cultural events like performances, protests, and sights to see. Its impossible to experience it all in just nine weeks