STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: The Ballerina Bioengineer

12/6/2022 Bethan Owen

Katie, who is now studying blood-based diagnostics in Grainger Dean Rashid Bashir’s lab, started her college experience determined to not only accelerate her studies and enter the world of bioengineering research, but to continue her love for dance. 

Written by Bethan Owen

It’s hard to predict what little things might change the course of your life. For bioengineering PhD student Katie Koprowski, one of those little things was her mother walking past the Ruth Page  School of Dance on Dearborn Parkway in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. 

“My mother studied musical theater in college,” Katie said. “She took a dance history class, and when my mom moved to Chicago and walked  past the Ruth Page School of Dance, she thought ‘Oh, I learned about Ruth Page  in my history class, I should enroll my daughter there,’” Katie said. “This was when I was three. I took classes, I fell in love with it, and I've been taking ballet ever since.”

Katie dancing
Katie dancing

Katie noted that at that time, there was a medical school located right across the street from the dance studio – which later became part of Rosalind Franklin Medical School. Her father used to encourage her to study medicine for her career, and the two fields of dance and medicine continued to influence her.

Katie, who is now studying blood-based diagnostics in Grainger Dean Rashid Bashir’s lab, developed her ballet experience into something much more than just a hobby. She trained throughout her childhood and teenage years, and continued to make dance a priority when she arrived at UIUC. Katie started her college experience determined to not only accelerate her studies and enter the world of bioengineering research, but to continue her love for dance. 

Naturally, that meant taking all the major-level ballet classes offered by the dance department, but Katie didn’t stop there. When she and fellow bioengineering alumna Caroline Fatina noticed the lack of ballet clubs on campus, they decided that something had to change.

“We banded together with a couple of our friends in the dance department ballet class to  start our own club called Pointe Shoe Lab,” said Katie. “We wanted to create a supportive and stress-free environment for people of beginning to advanced levels of ballet so they could  learn and practice ballet technique in a supportive environment.”

The group not only offers classes but regular showcase performances, most recently including excerpts from George Balanchine’s Serenade and acts from Sleeping Beauty. The creation of Pointe Shoe Lab was one of the first places where Katie’s ballet and bioengineering passions influenced each other, but it wasn’t the last.

“We called it the Pointe Shoe Lab because we wanted to have a kind of lab element to it, because Caroline and I are both engineers ,” Katie said. “We wanted to connect ballet to the way labs explore society through innovation and experiments and new findings. We wanted our club to be a platform for dancers and students and all members of the community to explore artistry and technique within dance, and discover new things about themselves that they could express through dance.”

Pointe Shoe Lab achieved these goals so well that they were asked this summer by the university to perform at a donor thank-you event to celebrate the success of the “With Illinois” campaign.

“That really was a proud moment,” Katie said. “Getting to see all the dancers shine. It was really exciting—and an honor—to represent the university as a BIOE PhD student and a dancer.”

At a glance, ballet and bioengineering might not seem to have much in common, but Katie has found many parallels between the two disciplines. Dance and research are challenging occupations that require collaboration and adaptability, and both always have room for improvement and personal growth. 

Katie (far right) and fellow Pointe Shoe Lab dancers with UIUC Chancellor Robert J. Jones
From left to right: Pointe Shoe Lab dancers Sanya Sharma, Diana Billerman, UIUC Chancellor Robert J. Jones, and Katie Koprowski at the With Illinois event

Katie has also had many opportunities to teach in both her athletics and academics, and it’s something she’d like to continue. She plans to become a bioengineering professor one day, where she will have the opportunity to teach while continuing to research her bioengineering interests of diagnostics and biosensors. 

As someone who has been able to pursue her passions so diligently throughout her life, Katie shared some of her insights into what has made it possible.  

“If you haven't found your passion yet, it's all about having open-mindedness and being proactive about finding new opportunities to explore different avenues that you're interested in,” Katie said. “And the acceptance of failure. Whenever you start a new avenue or research path or hobby, you're never going to be perfect at it the first time you try it. You always have to accept failure until you can reach success.”

Learn more about Pointe Shoe Lab, or watch their 2022 Spring Showcase, videographed by Amy Young.

 


Share this story

This story was published December 6, 2022.