Global Design Spring 26 Highlights Part 1 - Kate Gemrich

This Spring, GEARE Ambassadors is excited to continue spotlighting GEARE students whose experiences and work abroad have helped reshape their worldview and leave a lasting impact on the global communities they served. For our first highlight, meet Catherine Gemrich, a senior in Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University, who spent their spring semester and summer at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. Following the end of her study abroad semester, Kate stayed in Germany to help as a research assistant at the Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics under Dr. Tomaso Zambelli. 

At ETH Zürich for her global design project, Kate researched and developed microenvironments to support the proliferation of filamentous fungi, enabling the ability to do high phase studies under a microscope. Analyzing the nutrient transportation and signals of fungi becomes increasingly difficult with single-celled organisms, so special microenvironments need to be cultivated to facilitate growth over a controlled set of time. The project used the following main methods: spores were manually seeded, channel performance was evaluated, and development was monitored through microscopic imaging.

Among the highlights of her experience abroad, her favorite part was learning about how interesting everyone was and how easy it was to meet new people. When asked about what it was like meeting new people, she recalled, “A single person you didn't meet that didn't surprise you like in some way about like the hobbies they had or what the field that they were studying, what they wanted to do in life, and where they come from… It was really interesting getting to know all of these different people.” Before going abroad, there were a few concerns with making friendships in a completely different country. However, she recalls being surprised about the friendliness of people with a “reverse Culture shock. It was not what I was expecting, but it was in the best way possible.”

Some of her other favorite experiences include having the opportunity to work on working on an entrepreneurship class with all the other underclassmen and eventually competing in a pitch competition. To her, “getting to work with a lot of really like-minded individuals, even though we came from very different backgrounds, was so cool.” She even had the opportunity to travel with some of her classmates. Due to the block schedule of ETH Zurich’s classes, where they can meet one time a week for multiple hours, Kate was able to schedule a 4 day weekend to travel and complete any course work. Some of her favorite places that she got to visit include Portugal and Istanbul.

Kate describes her time in Switzerland as transformative, exciting, and full of unexpected growth. From conducting research on microenvironments to building meaningful friendships across cultures, her experience abroad strengthened both her technical expertise and her global perspective. Kate encourages all GEARE students to “push [themselves]. Take risks… go and find opportunities for yourself. They’re not going to come to your doorstep… they are there. You just have to be willing to work for them.” Experiences like these demonstrate the true impact of global engineering: growth happens when students step outside their comfort zones, engage with new perspectives, and challenge themselves in unfamiliar environments. We encourage all GEARE students to put themselves out there, embrace new opportunities, and take full advantage of the experiences that global engineering can offer.

Jack Warren

Aerospace Engineering 

Spain