Grad Spotlight: Ting Ting Li’s Impact Felt in Research and Community

Northwestern Engineering is a bustling community with diverse interests and countless opportunities to get involved.

Ting Ting Li didn’t sit on the sidelines and watch.

Li, who is graduating this month from the McCormick School of Engineering with a degree in biomedical engineering, worked under Professor Jennifer Dunn at the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience. Li also had an internship at the Argonne National Laboratory, investigating how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced environmental pollution and applying her bioplastics work into that context. Li’s interest in sustainability and medicine drove her to work with Dunn on conducting a life cycle assessment of biopsy kits.

Away from research, Li joined the McCormick Student Advisory Board to get involved in the engineering community. Li organized Engineering Week 2023, thanks in part to the connections she had nurtured across campus organizations. 

“To me, it was a coming together of all my friends I had made in McCormick and seeing that in fruition with our banner up in Tech was amazing,” Li said. 

In a Q&A, Li reflected on her time at Northwestern Engineering.

Why did you decide to pursue engineering at Northwestern?
Although I wasn't sure what engineering was, I knew I loved the sciences, particularly how it intersected with healthcare and improving health outcomes. In my mind, engineering was the most exciting space because it wasn't only learning the basic sciences, but learning to apply them to create stuff that didn't exist before. Looking back, the innovation found in engineering was what truly drew me to McCormick at Northwestern — it's an energy that is hard to find in a different school.

How did the McCormick curriculum help build a balanced, whole-brain ecosystem around your studies in your major?
Rooted in whole-brain engineering, the McCormick curriculum, from the very start in Design Thinking and Communication, challenges us to think of problems more broadly. Often, in my non-STEM classes, my discussions with peers about technological solutions to larger systemic issues, such as environmental pollution, have shown that people may see technology as a band-aid solution to the bigger problem that requires policy changes. Although I acknowledge their point, what I always bring up is how in McCormick, our focus has been to contextualize all our problems while also considering other points, such as long-term feasibility, environmental effects, and so on. It's not enough to look at the problem at face value. It's important to consider the breadth of it and how it ties into larger systems and disciplines. The McCormick curriculum further encourages that by requiring us to take courses outside of STEM. Most notably, the communication sciences and disorders classes I took for my minor helped expand my own view of healthcare to audiologists and speech language pathologists and allowed me to see how innovation manifests in those spaces such as in hearing aids.

What skills or knowledge did you learn in the undergraduate program that you think will stay with you for a lifetime?
Engineering is hard. There's no way around that, so one of the biggest lessons I learned is how to be resilient and to not give up when it gets hard. I've had my own share of poor exams and assignments in the past four years, but everyone around me has too. I was lucky enough to have supportive mentors and friends who motivated me when it was hard. When you fail, it's OK to be upset about it, especially if you tried your hardest, but it's important to keep going and to remember the long-term goals you have. This is something that will definitely stay with me for a long time.

What's next? What are your short- and long-term plans/goals in terms of graduate studies and/or career path? 
I will be continuing my full-time position as a medical assistant at Evanston Hospital for my gap year while I apply to medical schools. Everyone has asked me where I'd like to end up, and I've said any medical school that will accept me, but I wouldn't mind spending the next years of my life in Chicago or somewhere new in the Northeast. 

What advice do you have for current and future Northwestern Engineering students?Everyone I know has felt imposter syndrome at least once, so my advice to current and incoming Northwestern Engineering students is to remember that you can do this. It's easy to lose that in the chaos of achievements, exam scores, and so on, but at the end of the day, you were accepted and chosen to come here because Northwestern knew that you could handle it. You are meant to be here and you can do the hard stuff that needs to be done. Don't forget that; no matter how hard it feels and how lost you might feel about your future. You belong here, so make the most of your time.