Bragg combines interests in medicine and engineering

Julian Alexander Bragg of Arlington, Va., is the newest of the Emory/Georgia Tech MD/PhD students. A 1995 graduate from the George Washington University School of Engineering, Bragg has known he wanted to put medicine and engineering together ever since his first year of college. That was the summer he won a National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellowship for high school students and undergraduates which he says opened his eyes to the possibilities of the two fields combined. He worked with Edward Schmidt in the Laboratory of Neural Control, learning how implants could be activated by electrical activity in the cells. "I knew then I wanted to work with something like neurological prosthetics, artificial limbs or other implants that could be directly `plugged in' to the nerves to restore function," said Bragg.

Emory's School of Medicine had come highly recommended, but Bragg said what clinched his decision was the announcement in the catalogue of the combined degree program. "I couldn't resist the possibility of getting both a great medical school and great engineering school."

Like all students in the program, he had to be accepted independently by both schools. He was, even winning the coveted Whitaker Fellowship at Georgia Tech and funding from NIH. He spent most of June and July in the laboratory of Georgia Tech professor Steve Deweerth, who heads the Center for Computing and Sensory Motor Systems. In August Bragg moved to the Emory campus, where he underwent a two-week immersion in embryology and began the first year of medical school. During the next two years as a medical student, he intends to attend laboratory meetings at Georgia Tech as well as special classes held for all of Emory's 37 MD/PhD students.

And when it is all done, several years down the road? Bragg has been considering specializing in surgery so that he could both develop and actually implant the new neurological devices he believes are likely to revolutionize medicine.