It’s unusual that engineering students have time to participate in extracurricular activities, but then Collins Watson is not your usual engineering student.

Collins came to UT Arlington in 2003 to pursue a graduate degree in biomedical engineering after earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Texas Christian University. While at TCU, he received academic achievement scholarship awards and served as an undergraduate research assistant in both the engineering and physics departments.

His outstanding academic performance continued at UT Arlington, where he earned University Scholar Awards in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Also in 2005, Collins began what was to become an impressive record of student leadership activities, first as the public relations officer of the local chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Student Society and then as the group’s president for 2005-2006. During that time, he was also president to UT Arlington’s Graduate Student Senate. These endeavors earned him the University’s Outstanding Student Leader Award in 2006.

“I often joke that if you stick your toe in a door at UTA, someone will pull you in and get you excited about whatever is going on inside,” Collins said laughingly. “That definitely happened with me. Getting involved in leadership and service has been an incredibly rewarding experience, adding much to my education and giving me skills and confidence that I would not have otherwise had.”

Collins’ involvement in student organizations grew on and beyond the UT Arlington campus. He was vice president of UTA’s Student Congress and a member and committee chair of The University of Texas System’s Student Advisory Council during 2006-2007. In 2007-2008, Collins served as president of UTA’s Student Congress, vice-chair of The University of Texas System’s Student Advisory Council, and a member of the board of directors for the Downtown Arlington Management Corporation, an appointment by the mayor of Arlington.

Along with these, he continued to earn accolades from the University for his scholarly and leadership activities, repeatedly receiving University Scholar and Outstanding Student Leader Awards.

“I have been fortunate to work with a lot of amazing and inspiring people,” he said. “One of the most important things I have learned while serving in these leadership positions is how hard work and passion for what you do are contagious.”

But however beneficial these activities have been in the development of communication skills, Collins’ academic interests exceeded them all.

“I always had an interest in biomedical engineering, but I think an experience in the summer of 2005 sealed it for me,” he said. “I was a volunteer in the operating room at the Plaza Medical Center in Fort Worth. Finding a love for the hospital environment, I quickly began picking up shifts as an operating room orderly. My time there taught me a lot about how hospitals and health care facilities operate and helped me prepare for a future as a biomedical scientist.”

Collins is now working with Dr. Mario Romero-Ortega in the Regenerative Neurobiology Laboratory, where he is responsible for experiments investigating the molecular biology of neuromuscular junctions.

“I’m working with mouse brain cells and computers, trying to unravel mysteries that could allow people to control prosthetic robotic limbs with their minds or potentially treat neuromuscular diseases. It’s exciting to work on something that would have been considered science-fiction when I was a kid.”