My speech at the opening ceremonies of the 2015 Bioengineering High School Competition, as prepared for delivery.
Thank you, and welcome to the second annual Bioengineering High School Competition, hosted by BioEHS at UC Berkeley!
As the Bioengineering Honor Society, we strive to advance bioengineering, both within UC Berkeley and in the community beyond. This effort begins with strengthening our membership, through workshops, networking events, and job and research opportunities. It continues with fostering the community, through service events and hosting the largest study group program on campus. And it culminates with events like this one - reaching out to elementary, middle, and high school students such as yourselves - and showing that as long as you have talent, as long as you have drive, as long as you want to solve problems in biology, you can be a bioengineer.
I say this knowing that bioengineering is not easy. It’s not supposed to be. To solve problems in human health and medicine, biology simply is not enough. Bioengineers must learn more to gain the set of tools needed to combat these concerns - from chemical engineering to patent engineering and from computer science to political science - but having knowledge isn’t enough.
Bioengineers must be undertake more responsibility because the subject of our work is not only chemicals and computers, but humans and other living things. The goal of our efforts is not just to save time or material, it is to save lives.
And there are challenges that come with this responsibility - FDA regulations, concerns in bioethics, societal impacts - nuances that may slow your progress. It will take longer for a bioengineer to succeed, but when you do, you feel a greater accomplishment. You are rewarded with not only wealth and fame, but also the knowledge that your efforts touched another human life.
Responsibility. Character. Knowledge. These are some of the qualities of a successful bioengineer. Throughout today’s events, you will meet many of them - famed academics, researchers young and old, budding entrepreneurs, among others - and hear their perspectives on why bioengineering was right for them. After today, I hope you will gain a better understanding of what bioengineers do and what a career in biotechnology is like, and I hope that some of you will see the value that bioengineering holds for you.
Regardless of your outcome in this competition, I hope you find this event informative, and fun too. Regardless of which career path you later pursue, I hope that you will take today as an opportunity to meet and network with all the competitors gathered here - nearly 80 of you and with more on their way, because the next generation of the world’s leadership lie within people like you. Talk to each other; learn from each other; exchange ideas; help each other make the world a better place.
And we, here at BioEHS, will continue to work to bring more events like this to more young leaders just like you.
Thank you for your time, and let the bioengineering begin!