The Master of Translational Medicine team of Huzaifa Beg, Rahul Nayak, Danielle Chou and Sita Kumar has been selected to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) from March 6 to March 8 of 2015.
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. Taking place at the University of Miami this year, CGI U is a conference where students, university representatives, topic experts, and celebrities meet to innovate novel solutions to current global challenges. Students bring their unique “commitments to action,” or methods of translating practical goals into feasible, measurable solutions.
The MTM team’s commitment to action involves the design and production of a device capable of detecting vaginal infections in pregnant women, which carry the potential risks of either maternal transmission of infections to the unborn child or causing the infant to be born preterm. The Masters students are collaborating with the Smart Diaphragm project at UCSF, which focuses on developing digital medical devices for earlier and at-home detection of pregnancy-related complications such as preterm birth.
The team is led by principal investigator Dr. Larry Rand, MD from the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, and co-principal investigators in the Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences to accomplish this goal—Shuvo Roy, Phd; BioE alum Mozziyar Etemadi, PhD; and former MTM/current medical student Philip Chung, MS.