Michael Bassett wants to use his UCF engineering and medical training to create better surgical instruments. He is among 6,000 undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students who will graduate from UCF Dec. 12-13.
A Florida native, he credits UCF with instilling in him a spirit of scientific discovery and a passion to use his love of science to help others.
Bassett will graduate with a medicine-engineering double degree in molecular and cellular biology and mechanical engineering. The degree program, one of UCF’s most challenging, recognizes that the future of healthcare is in technology, and the workforce needs trained professionals who can understand both the biology of disease and the engineering principles to create new healthcare solutions.
The double major requires 163 credit hours and a lot of time management skills. With back-to-back engineering and biomedical sciences labs as part of his routine, Bassett jokes he could actually feel his mind transform as he walked from one classroom to the next to absorb and process two vastly different topics.
While at UCF Bassett completed multiple internships at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. A Burnett Honors College scholar, he served as a teaching assistant and a chemistry undergraduate lab researcher.
Bassett says UCF helped him understand the medical “whys” of the medical engineering he creates and wants to go into an industry that will allow him to design and test better medical tools that can make surgery less invasive, more efficient and safer.
“With my training, I know the what and the why,” he says. “I can use that knowledge to solve more medical problems. I hope I can help my colleagues understand why something is happening in the body.”
- Wrtten by Wendy Sarubbi
- December 9, 2025