Christine Hsieh – website N/A
Harvard-MIT HST - Health Sciences and Technology, Pain and Imaging / PhD6

Experience
As a child I dabbled in paint, sketching, fiber arts, clay, papers forms, poetry, and of course legos. Though I never got as skilled as my brother in creating wild lego machines, I have gone on to evolve my approach and experience in many creative realms - learning oil painting, wire sculptures, sculptural self-portraits, and at one point creating a group public art display entitled "Column of Crisis" (a support pillar in the MIT Stata Center covered in MIT's waste product to the ceiling). In terms of classes, I have taken programming classes in HS and college, electrical engineering courses as part of my graduate program, and an MIT studio class in architecture where we dealt with the interactions between space and form. I also participated in a one night competition at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center as part of a team of an SMFA artist, an MIT Sloan student, and an MIT science/engineering student, conceptualizing a new way that art could be consumed, disseminated, or explored (we won 2nd!). I feel passionately about evolving my creative self and process. Art, architecture, design and craft are all realms where I intend on continuing to grow my vision, knowledge and techniques as I go forward.

Why
There is a crisis in psychosomatic diseases now that arises from disconnection between the mind and the body; chronically not eating when you're hungry and not sleeping when you're tired are just two pieces of evidence. Medicines fail dismally at treating severe depression and anxiety disorders, and psychologists work commendably hard but are expensive in our healthcare system and not readily accessible in all places. In addition, the reality is that everyone's disease course and life runs quite differently such that ultimately each story will be unique, causing problems in generalizability of group treatment. We need to give patients the tools to sustainably grow their own story of healing. I aspire to be a leader in changing the way treatment for chronic diseases is carried out, with a much larger role of self-work with a supportive scaffold (interface) that is dynamic and life-like, as to be an indispensable aid to the growth of their coping capability. This could take the form of being able to put patient's thoughts into physical form and helping the shift from destructive to productive, or making essential supportive connections much more real in this increasingly remotely connected world, as the first two projects in this class. If we can give people something that draws them out of their mental merry-go-round and puts them back in the physical world at the moments they need it most, that could make all the difference. These ideas are what I hope to start working on in this class!

Art
Architecture
Craft/Fabrication
Design
DIY Electronics
Electrical Eng.
Mech. Eng.
Programming/CS

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