Personnel
Senior Research Associates
Holly Berns MS, PhD candidate
Holly received a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 2017. She began her career at Globus Medical Inc where she installed, repaired, and maintained the Excelsius® GPS (surgical robot). She then joined Stryker Sustainability Solutions where she worked as a post-market quality engineer to monitor device risk file for reprocessed single-use medical devices and reduce complaint rates. Her educational training, research, and past work with retrospective studies, have provided her with a solid foundation in mechanical engineering and biotechnology. For her graduate training, she has developed technical and professional skills as a bioengineering researcher by focusing on product development, in vitro modeling, and materials testing for a novel size-adaptive aspiration catheter (related to ATI’s ATTAC technology). She has a strong focus on developing new medical devices that eliminate stroke treatment gender disparities, which historically have resulted in less effective outcomes for female patients.
Sophia Robertson MS, PhD candidate
Sophia received degrees in Biomedical Science (BS), Chemistry (BS), and Spanish (BA) from NAU in 2020. She started working in the BDL in 2021 and started her Bioengineering PhD program at NAU in 2022. She received her Master’s of Science in Bioengineering in 2023. Her doctoral research is focused on improving the biocompatibility of metal neurovascular devices by modifying their surfaces using selfassembled monolayers.
Wyatt Clark MS, PhD candidate
Wyatt received a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 2022 and a MS in Bioengineering in 2023. Wyatt began his career at the U.S. Naval Observatory working on the construction of single aperture telescopes. He transitioned to Lowell Observatory, where he worked on the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer. He is now a federal civil servant working at the Naval Research Laboratory on a number of optical and robotic based projects. In pursuit of a future professional career in bioengineering, Wyatt is now a researcher at BDL, where his research focuses on a groundbreaking device called Balloon Mesh, designed to support and address challenges in treating brain aneurysms.
Steven Schwartz, PhD candidate
Steven graduated from NAU in 2022 with a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering. He has extensive expertise in the development, maintenance, and quantification of real-time pressure and flow data from neurovascular vessel models. His previous work in the BDL involved writing LabVIEW© programs, developing experimental setups for the lab’s advanced in vitro flow models, and developing a pumpoperated device to clean and prep 3D-printed in vitro vessel models.
Research Associates
Jesse Wells, Lead Engineer – BDL and ATI Balloon-Mesh device
Jesse graduated from NAU in 2022 with a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering. He has worked as the BDL Lead Engineer since August 2022 and is also the Lead Engineer for the Balloon-Mesh device (ATI) since January 2024. Jesse has extensive experience in 3D-print vessel models, development and validation of mechanical testing protocols for medical devices, data analysis and reporting for FDA submissions, simulated surgeries for stroke device testing, cleanroom qualification and device manufacture, grant and manuscript submissions, and development of novel device prototypes and innovative device testing techniques.