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Sara Kron is a University Innovation Fellow and an undergraduate student studying Bioengineering and German at the University of Pittsburgh. She is also pursuing the Innovation, Product Design, and Entrepreneurship certificate in the Swanson School of Engineering. Sara is passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) both within and beyond Pitt and wants to share her knowledge and skills with others in the hopes of inspiring them to pursue I&E in ways that are meaningful to them. Above all, she believes that each person’s unique interests, talents, and perspectives are extraordinarily valuable and should be nurtured so that each of us can contribute to a better, more compassionate society.

Prior to beginning college, Sara never pictured herself as someone who would grow to love and promote I&E, but a freshman capstone course introduced her to design thinking, human-centered design, and rapid prototyping in the form of experiential learning. From that course on she knew she needed to incorporate those skills and mindset into her career. Two years later, Sara has created a bronchoscopy trainer of her own design for a medical training facility, helped a team to develop a system to measure precise volumes of water in tanker trucks in the oil and gas industry for a Pittsburgh-based startup company, and redesigned a wall-mounted muscle force sensing system for an MLB team, which she presented at the 2019 national Biomedical Engineering Society conference. Sara is also extremely excited to join Philips Advanced Innovation as a co-op in the spring of 2020, where she will get to apply all her training up to this point toward transforming sleep and respiratory care. After graduation, Sara is planning to land a full-time engineering design job while pursuing graduate studies. Eventually, she hopes to give it a go in the entrepreneurial world with her own company (once profound inspiration strikes, that is).

Since discovering a passion for human-centered design, Sara has tried to find more ways to share this excitement with others. She became involved in the Pitt makerspaces as a mentor and is looking forward to implementing big, lasting changes as a University Innovation Fellow, particularly in areas like cross-disciplinary collaboration. Outside of this space, Sara enjoys the great outdoors, volleyball, and boardgames with friends and family and is attempting to learn to play the ukulele. Sara is also fascinated by language, and has been learning German since the eighth grade. In the summer of 2018 she was able to study abroad in Munich, and she hopes to live in Germany at some point in her life.