Event Description
Topic
Innovation for Impact: Engineering Sustainable Solutions for Challenging Public Health Problems
Presented By
Steven E. Kern, PhD,
Interim CEO, Global Health Labs
This hybrid event will be held in Gerri C. LeBow Hall, Room 409, or via Zoom.
Register for the livestream
About the Talk
Though public health problems often impact a large portion of the population throughout the globe, they typically burden individuals and communities with the least resources to combat them. Innovation can facilitate the creation of impactful solutions to these problems, especially when innovators identify platforms which scale to be effective throughout the world. This can particularly occur when innovators take an approach very familiar to engineering students and researchers, that is, taking a systems perspective of the problem so that the context in which the innovation needs to succeed is understood. Over the last two decades of working on solutions to problems for which “there is no market”, I have learned the importance of taking this bigger view so that innovations can help as many as possible. I will review some examples of those problem-solution pairs and provide some personal perspectives on using engineering innovation for impact.
About the Speaker
Steven E. Kern, PhD, is interim CEO of Global Health Labs, whose mission is to develop innovative technologies to address unmet health care needs, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Global Health Labs helps to advance the strategic priorities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with technology innovations focused on diagnostics, reproductive, maternal and child health, and tools and equipment for primary care. It is created and funded by Gates Ventures, the private office of Bill Gates. |
