Scarlett Miller
PROFESSOR OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
ADMINISTRATIVE FELLOW AT PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY and co-founder of the award-winning startup, Medulate, Scarlett Miller and her team are currently working on a patented technology using robotics, advanced sensoring, and machine learning to train medical residents and doctors in placing central lines via the neck—a process that is normally done through observation of a senior doctor completing the procedure, without the opportunity for hands-on training.
As principal investigator on the project, Miller explained that using their online curriculum paired with a simulation approach allows the trainees to try the procedure as often as needed without putting anyone at risk. The project is a result of interdisciplinary work between engineers and clinicians, aiming to help decrease infections and other complications that can occur when placing a central line catheter.
“I see huge opportunities for the integration of virtual and augmented reality and machine learning within the medical community,” Miller said. She believes it could transform the medical field in minimizing human error.
“Research is the pathway to innovation and advancement: To think about not what is, but what could be.”
Scarlett Miller
Photo: Michael Owen, Penn State brand photographer
Miller’s involvement in a professional engineering society opened a pathway for disseminating her research to academics as well as industry professionals, creating a community where she could share ideas and get feedback. “It provided a network of support and a means to give back through being a mentor and being mentored,” she said.
The path to leadership had its hurdles. Miller shared that for the first decade of her career, she chose to ignore the very clear forms of gender bias and discrimination that were happening to her and those around her, and it wasn’t until she witnessed other women colleagues experiencing the same discrimination that she realized trying to ignore it was a huge mistake. “So I started speaking up. I started the hard path to reform, which isn’t easy,” she said, explaining that it would never get better otherwise. Miller said that no patent hits her the way the successes of her current and past students do. The advice she gives her students and future generations of engineers is to embrace their problem-solving natures by slowing down the solution generation and taking the time to truly understand what the problem is you’re trying to solve. “It is there where we have the opportunity to truly amplify our impact.”
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