UMaine CBE Student Named 2023 Salutatorian
Biomedical Engineering major Zoe Vittum of Brewer, Maine is named UMaine 2023 Salutatorian!
Vittum, who minors in bioinstrumentation and neuroscience, is a UMaine Presidential Scholar, and a 2022–23 Helen Louise Stinchfield ’18 Memorial Scholar and Tau Beta Pi Scholar. Her numerous academic and research awards include two National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) — Sensor Science and Engineering at UMaine and Functional Genomics at The Jackson Laboratory. She also received a UMaine Center for Undergraduate Research Fellowship and the Overall Best Poster Award at the Onshape Research Symposium.
As an Early College student, Vittum was a student research assistant in the Advanced Manufacturing Center, where she collaborated with UMaine experts and industry clients on solution manufacturing and implementation. In addition to her REU at The Jackson Laboratory as a student research fellow, developing computational methods and workflows to analyze genetic architecture and translate large-scale data into genetic models, Vittum was a clinical engineering intern with Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center. Most recently, in her REU in the laboratory of professor Karissa Tilbury, she collaborated to develop and implement a polarization control module within a two-photon microscope and conducted cell culture assays to investigate collagen remodeling.
On campus, Vittum has had leadership roles in the UMaine chapters of the Society of Women Engineers, Tau Beta Pi and the Biomedical Engineering Society, UMaine Black Bear Robotics and UMaine’s NASA Lunabotics Mining Challenge Team, which competed at the Kennedy Space Center in 2022. Her volunteer efforts have included work at Challenger Learning Center, VEX Robotics and FIRST Robotics, and as a UMaine Cooperative Extension 4-H STEM Ambassador.
Vittum plans to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, concentrated in women’s health, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.