About Me

My name is Sasha Rassoli, and I am in my final semester as an undergraduate here at UC Berkeley studying Bioengineering. I am interested in biomedical devices but more importantly anything that will help improve the quality of lives for people all around the globe.

                The way I got involved in this course is a bit odd, but I believe it was almost a blessing of sorts. I needed to take 5 more units in order to be considered a full-time student, and I was hoping to fill those last units with DeCal and research credits. I hadn't realized that those units are capped until the start of the second week of classes. I momentarily panicked – I was one unit away from “full-time” status and had no idea what course of action to take. I searched on Berkeley Time, a helpful website that has compiled course offerings and ratings into one platform, to find any 1-2 unit classes. I specifically wanted to keep my workload down because I knew my time this semester would be filled with job hunting, studying for the GRE, and preparing myself for the real world.

                This course ended up being the only one I found to have many positive ratings and to be engineering-related. As engineers, we are creative – with the right knowledge and means, we have the ability to create a product/concept that is unique and marketable. Unfortunately, many engineers have never taken the time to equip themselves with this knowledge – the know-how. My father, a mechanical engineer, has several patents, but I never knew what that really meant. I have seen patent listings, but I have never been quite sure how to make full sense of them. Lastly, and most importantly, I do not know the process and involvement of filing for a patent. What similarities to existing concepts can we get away with when filing for our own patent, and why is it that sometimes individuals and big businesses opt of out patenting an idea? What exactly can I patent? These are all questions I hope to have answered by the end of our semester.

Although the original reason of why I signed up for this course may seem vain, I honestly think myself to be lucky. That sense of urgency pushed me to find a course that is likely to be the most relevant in my field of work and in the real world. I am so glad that I was able to find a truly pertinent and interesting course for my last semester at UC Berkeley!