Jonah Mudge has been a graduate teaching assistant for EBME 308: Biomedical Signals and Systems for the past three fall semesters. “My favorite thing about TAing is when a student grasps a difficult concept,” he said. “It’s so rewarding to see their faces light up when they suddenly get it!” He enjoys teaching and is considering a career as a research professor after he graduates with his Ph.D.
Recently, Mudge was honored with the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Assistantship award from Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. The EBME 308 course instructor, Assistant Professor Debra McGivney, described Mudge as one of the best TAs she ever had. “His weekly recitation sessions were highly attended, and students appreciate his careful and methodical approach to problem solving,” she said. “He has a very calm demeanor, which was welcome by all during quizzes and exams.”
McGivney also appreciated Mudge’s proactive approach to managing the immense workload that comes from serving as a TA for a class with over 100 students enrolled. His review sheets on complex numbers and basic circuits, two areas where students struggle, were particularly helpful. “Jonah gave helpful feedback to Professor Bolu Ajiboye (co-instructor) and me on how to manage this workload, and considering his feedback, we made changes in grading and other procedures to improve the graduate TA experience,” said McGivney. “His leadership within the TA team, particularly in his second and third semesters with the course, was invaluable in keeping things running smoothly.”
Mudge described CWRU as “a great place for research and innovation.” A member of Assistant Professor Emily Graczyk’s lab in the Human Fusions Institute, he was drawn to biomedical engineering because it combined his interest in healthcare with his passion for creating. In the lab, he is investigating the sense of limb position and movement in people with upper limb loss, a crucial area of research with the potential to improve amputees’ lives significantly. He hopes to apply his findings to non-disabled individuals in teleoperation or virtual reality scenarios, further expanding the potential impact of his work.
Primarily interested in developing sensory-enabled, bidirectional prostheses, Mudge has enjoyed participating in surgical planning, sensory neural interface implantation, and the first experiments with upper extremity limb loss study participants during his time at CWRU. “It’s pretty cool to see someone’s reaction to feeling sensation on a hand they lost years or even decades ago.” As he continues his Ph.D. studies, he plans to continue neural interfacing research and potentially design neural interfaces.
