Home Sweet Home

“When I got to NYIT-Manhattan, I thought, ‘This is like a family, this is not a college!’” says Bruna Fittipaldi. “This is a little family that helps everyone else.” A team player through and through, it was this inclusive and welcoming character, and the diversity of NYIT’s Manhattan campus that attracted her to the school. As a biomedical engineering major, she hopes to carry that collaborative spirit into her future career as well. “My career aspiration is to become a scientist and be part of a team that shares the same goals: To find answers that can help our society in a positive way.”

While at NYIT, Fittipaldi has had the opportunity to participate in research on a molecular modeling experiment with Assistant Professor Ana Petrovic, Ph.D. Through this research, Fittipaldi has participated in building 3-D molecular models of both potential drug leads and bio molecular targets and predicting molecular properties that are of relevance for intelligent drug design and/or progress in material science, among other things.

Fittipaldi’s mother was skeptical of her daughter’s career choice at first. “My mom asked me if biomedical engineering is really what I wanted to do and I said, ‘I’ll prove to you that that’s what I want,” says Fittipaldi. “NYIT has provided me real experiences working on scientific research, and I now know that becoming a scientist and doing experiments is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” she says with confidence.

In addition to pursuing her passion, NYIT has helped Fittipaldi come out of her shell. “People might be surprised to find out that I used to be extremely shy. I was always by myself and afraid of making friends,” says Fittipaldi, who is the founder and president of the Biomedical Engineering Society on the Manhattan campus. “Now, things have changed completely, and I am glad that I am able to make friends and help whoever is in need.”

Based on that experience, her advice to aspiring NYIT students should come as no surprise. “Be confident! Believe in yourself more than anyone else,” she says. “You will be rejected and you will hear ‘No’ as an answer, but be confident and try again, just like I did.”