Class of 2016, BS in Bioengineering

Following his May graduation, bioengineering major Mario Mata began working as an associate product development engineer for the DePuy Synthes Companies, a medical device firm and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary located in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Mata, a U.S. naturalized citizen from Egypt, has been designing prototypes and testing protocols for new orthopaedic trauma surgical devices for the firm since he began a co-op there three days a week during the spring semester of his junior year. He also interned with the firm last summer and, during his senior year, worked as a co-op there three days a week while attending engineering classes.

"What I like about my new job is that I will be working with a new technology/innovations group," says the Upper Merion High School graduate. "Our job is to take on a lot of very ambitious, next-generation technology concepts and see how we can incorporate them into new medical devices."

Mata, who won the college's Engineering Week undergraduate poster competition last year, began working as a freshman in the laboratory of Peter Lelkes, the founding chair of the Bioengineering Department and director of the Temple Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering. He worked for Lelkes one summer as an undergraduate merit stipend award winner. "He really took me under his wing and encouraged me," says Mata, who presented his research on using bioactive, soybean-based scaffolds to help skin cell regeneration regenerate tissue last year at a Biomedical Engineering Society regional conference in Boston.

Mata, who has been nominated for the Theodore P. Vassallo Award for his service to the College of Engineering, also led a successful petition drive—as a mechanical engineering major—to have the Bioengineering Department start its undergraduate program a year early so he could switch majors.

He also founded the Temple student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and served as its president for three years. His duties have included: mentoring incoming students; launching a free student-to-student tutoring program and study nights; collaborating with other student organizations; and recruiting industry professionals to speak at BMES meetings, serve as advisors for senior design projects and represent their firms at career fairs.

"At times it was insanely difficult to manage both my course load and all of the other things I wanted to do," says Mata, "but I've enjoyed every minute of my time at Temple."