1. School of Engineering
Department of Biomedical Engineering
260 Glenbrook Rd, UNIT 3247
STORRS, CT 06269-3247
Phone: 860.486.5838
Fax: 860.486.2500
www.bme.engr.uconn.edu An Equal Opportunity Employer
Bin Feng, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Center for Molecular Medicine
University of Connecticut
Email: fengb@uconn.edu
Phone: 860-486-6435
27th Nov, 2016
To Whom it May Concern,
I am delighted to write this recommendation letter on behalf of Chris Kneeshaw to fully
support his job application. I have known Chris personally since Sept 2015 when he made the
decision to work on a research topic in neural engineering I proposed as his capstone senior
design project. I am the faculty mentor of Chris and his design teammates and have interacted
with them in a weekly basis during their senior year at UCONN. Chris also attended a class I
lectured (Engineering Design) and has interacted with me regularly on and off class. After
receiving his BS degree in May, 2016, Chris worked as a research assistant in my lab for three
summer months and actively participated in a research project on optical clearing for deep tissue
imaging. Overall, I consider Chris as a hardworking, dedicated individual with superior
teamwork and communication skills.
In the past summer I was able to see how well he worked in a laboratory on a regular
daily basis. His primary duty in my lab was to establish and refine a protocol for optical tissue
clearing which will permit subsequent confocal fluorescent imaging of fine nerve structures as
deep as 250 microns into the tissue. This required Chris to conduct multiple trial and errors and
work systematically to optimize the protocol conditions. Chris proved to be reliable and efficient
in performing the task and was able to document the developed protocols in details that can be
easily understood by other lab personnel. The summer time Chris spent in my lab has made it
evidently clear that he is more than equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to perform
in a wide range of labs.
The senior design project that Chris has committed to is no trivial task, demanding the
cutting edge technology and innovative thinking to achieve optimized interface between micro-
electrode arrays and peripheral nerve fibers. Chris and his teammates have risen against the
challenge and managed to make great progress to the project which I am quite impressed with.
Their design presentation was selected to the final round in the UCONN Engineering Day Event
(top 20% among all engineering senior design projects). In addition, Christopher was able to
quickly learn and apply many new skills needed to complete the project, the most notable of
which being the surgical dissection of the whole sciatic nerve from a mouse. I was impressed at
how quickly he mastered this difficult task and managed to keep the dissected nerve alive. Chris
also took the initiative to attend workshops on his own in order to properly construct the final
product. During the process, Chris has impressed me with his superior learning ability and
enthusiasm which are valuable traits leading to his future career success.

2. School of Engineering
Department of Biomedical Engineering
260 Glenbrook Rd, UNIT 3247
STORRS, CT 06269-3247
Phone: 860.486.5838
Fax: 860.486.2500
www.bme.engr.uconn.edu An Equal Opportunity Employer
Chris is more than just a well-trained engineer. He also has super communication and
interpersonal skills. He worked extremely well with everyone in his design team and my lab. He
is also a great leader, keeping everything and everyone organized and on task. Chris did a great
job in presenting their design project and was able to convey message to both scientists and those
unfamiliar with the topic.
I have been very pleased with Chris and find him a well-rounded engineer with a wide
range of mathematical, scientific, engineering, and interpersonal skills. Thus, I recommend
Chris’s application to your position with no reservations. Please feel free to call or email me if
you have additional questions.
Sincerely yours,
Bin Feng