In classrooms and labs across the Texas A&M University School of Engineering Medicine (EnMed), innovation doesn’t happen in silos. It happens when engineering precision intersects with medical reality.
This Valentine’s Day, EnMed is spotlighting two staff members who demonstrate that intersection in their work every day: Flordeliz “Liz” Bowles, medical radiological technologist, and Steven Bowles, laboratory manager.
While they work in different areas of the program, their shared purpose is evident in one powerful way: helping students turn ideas into tangible solutions that can change the future of health care.
A shared love of problem-solving
Long before EnMed, research labs or innovation spaces, their story began in middle school.
The two first met in sixth-grade band class and later began dating as teenagers, while developing very different interests: engineering and mechanical design on one side, health care and imaging on the other. Over time, those paths evolved separately but always with a shared mindset of curiosity and a willingness to build something from the ground up.
Years later, that same mindset would shape how they approached business ownership, innovation work and, ultimately, supporting students learning to think like physicianeers.
Here’s how they describe that journey and how it shapes their work at EnMed today.
How do you support student innovation at EnMed?
Steven works closely with students during hands-on design and prototyping work in the EnMed Innovation Center (EIC).
“There’s always students in the lab working on what we call our Innovation Immersion Experiences, where they have to create some type of solution that attempts to solve a medical need,” Steven said. “I’m there to make sure they safely use all the equipment and help guide them through the process.”
On the research side, Liz helps students translate complex engineering ideas into measurable clinical data.
“I’m in charge of the entire MRI space here,” Liz said. “I help the students manage and collect data for their projects.”
She says imaging often plays a key role in helping students see how engineering concepts translate into patient care. “The world of imaging is vast,” she said. “There are a lot of different aspects of engineering that we can actually measure that are usually not measurable in an engineering environment.”
How have your individual paths shaped how you support students?
Both say real-world experience helps them guide students through iteration and problem-solving, lessons learned long before EnMed.
Steven points to years of running his own business as foundational.
“For seven years, I actually ran a business doing laser engraving and 3D printing,” Steven said. “I was kind of doing all the website design, marketing, product design, graphic design, machine maintenance, shipping and billing.”
That experience helped him develop the skills to manage complex lab environments and support students in early-stage innovation.
Liz says her clinical background, combined with years of exposure to engineering through Steven’s work and career, has shaped how she mentors students.
“Talking to engineers is hard. It’s like a whole skill in itself,” she said. “I spend a lot of time helping the students with ideas. And with my health care background, and our powers combined, we usually are able to come up with something awesome,” she said.
What makes working with EnMed students the most meaningful?
“Those moments where you actually see the elements of a physicianeer appearing,” Steven said. “I see them relating their engineering knowledge to their medical knowledge. That’s really cool to me.”
For Liz, the student perspective is part of what makes the work meaningful. She says students often bring fresh curiosity and new approaches to complex health care challenges.
“They ask questions that, even though they seem simple, really open up how they think about health care problems,” she said.
When have engineering and medicine intersected in real life for you?
For years, the couple joked about combining their respective fields of imaging and engineering in a very personal way: 3D-printing a brain scan.
What started as an idea more than a decade ago eventually became reality at EnMed.
“I wondered if it would ever be possible for you to scan me, and we can take my brain out of the scan and turn it into a file that I can 3D print,” Steven said. “I had this idea, I think, in 2007 or 2008, and back then it was like a hilarious concept.”
Years later, that idea finally came to fruition. After completing an MRI scan, the imaging data was converted into a printable file, allowing Steven to create a physical 3D model of his brain.
“It was so crazy that it was this idea we had had for 15 years, like one day I’m going to 3D print my brain,” Steven said. “Now it’s such a crazy coincidence that we work in this job where I’m still doing my career, and she’s still doing her career. But we came together in this weird way that I was able to 3D print my own brain.”
What do you want students to understand about the innovation process?
They emphasize that innovation is rarely linear and that starting is often the hardest step.
“Sometimes you just need to start,” Liz said. “You’re not going to figure out all the issues by planning it out in your head. Just get started.”
Steven echoes that sentiment, noting that learning through mistakes is a necessary part of the innovation process.
“I view failure as a positive. I don’t think failure is negative at all,” Steven said. “If you want to do something correctly, the only way to do that is to know every way to do it incorrectly.”
Collaboration that changes lives
At EnMed, innovation is powered by collaboration: across disciplines, experiences and perspectives.
Staff like Liz and Steven help students learn that breakthroughs happen when technical skills meet real-world clinical applications, preparing them to become physicianeers ready to transform how health care problems are solved.
And in many ways, that’s what EnMed is all about: helping students develop one-of-a-kind solutions by bringing engineering and medicine together, one innovation at a time.
