Selby Chipman is an unflinching investigator, dedicated to using technology to improve peoples’ lives. She’s a fourth-generation Tiger, an Eagle Scout, an athlete, a musician—and a biomedical engineering student excited about improving health outcomes in communities around the world.

“I like being able to reach out to new groups of people and make helpful technology more accessible,” Chipman said. “Through scouting, I worked with veterans and underprivileged communities and enjoyed using math and science to bridge gaps within those communities. I also like that medical companies are making products more environmentally safe, redesigning components to make them more accessible and reducing emissions while reducing cost, which is why I really enjoy the biomedical engineering field.”

In addition to her major in biomedical engineering with an emphasis in biomechanics, Chipman is minoring in math and computer science.

“I really love the classes and enjoy being able to bridge my interests in public health and science with my love for math,” she said. “That’s where my passion lies, doing community outreach through technology and medicine.”

Exploration in the lab

This summer, Chipman is taking her experience to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an internship with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

As an Intramural Research Program research fellow, she is doing data analysis for the Undiagnosed Diseases Program. Each day, she goes to work in a clinical center that is also a functional hospital and uses publicly available information to make control data to compare to data from patients with the genetic disorder GM1, a neurodegenerative disease.

“I’m analyzing MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans and learning how the brain is developing and will use the data to examine how one type of gene therapy is working,” Chipman said. “Since I’m working with undiagnosed and rare diseases, I get to see things that you wouldn’t encounter in normal clinical settings. Even though I’m not currently planning to continue down the medical school path, I also get to work with the doctors, I sometimes get to meet patients and I’m able to get a lot of experiences with people that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to.”

Chipman connected with this internship by reaching out to multiple researchers at the NIH and expressing interest in working with them.

“The cool thing about this internship is that I can almost build my own experience, since there are a lot of different opportunities, seminars, speakers or classes I can attend,” she said. “I also enjoy working as an undergraduate alongside postdocs, post-bacs, doctors and other experts in their medical research fields who treat me as a part of the team.”

#MizzouMade since 1857

A fourth-generation Tiger, Chipman’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather all graduated with engineering degrees from Mizzou and have spent their careers engineering a better world.

“My great-grandfather graduated in the second class of electrical engineering students at Mizzou,” Chipman said. “My grandfather was a mechanical engineering student, and my father was an electrical engineering student.”

Despite her family’s connection with MU, it wasn’t a guarantee Chipman would follow in their footsteps. She was looking at state schools near home in North Carolina but wanted to go somewhere with more connections to the outdoors. Mizzou was a perfect fit.

“Mizzou has a great campus and is close to downtown Columbia where you can do a bunch of fun activities,” she said. “It’s fun to say, ‘I walk the same halls as my grandfather and my father,’ or know that my dad and I have lived in the same building. It’s something I have in common with my family that’s really special.

“I initially didn’t plan to follow in my family’s footsteps,” Chipman said. “But when I came to campus and toured the school, I fell in love with it. It felt like home.”

Earn a degree that prepares you to improve communities and change the world. Choose Mizzou Engineering!