Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation – Career Conversations Podcast
Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation’s Career Conversations Podcast is hosted by Executive Director Anne Hultgren, PhD and features guest interviews with Beckman Young Investigators, Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellows, and Beckman Scholars.
Nature Digital Medicine: Grass-roots entrepreneurship complements traditional top-down innovation in lung and breast cancer
The majority of biomedical research is funded by public, governmental, and philanthropic grants. These initiatives often shape the avenues and scope of research across disease areas. However, the prioritization of disease-specific funding is not always reflective of the health and social burden of each disease. We identify a prioritization disparity between lung and breast cancers, whereby lung cancer contributes to a substantially higher socioeconomic cost on society yet receives significantly less funding than breast cancer. Using search engine results and natural language processing (NLP) of Twitter tweets, we show that this disparity correlates with enhanced public awareness and positive sentiment for breast cancer. Interestingly, disease-specific venture activity does not correlate with funding or public opinion. We use outcomes from recent early-stage innovation events focused on lung cancer to highlight the complementary mechanism by which bottom-up “grass-roots” initiatives can identify and tackle under-prioritized conditions.
MIT Hacking Medicine
The mission of MIT Hacking Medicine is to infect, energize, and empower a diverse, global community in healthcare entrepreneurship and innovation to scale medicine to attack and solve healthcare problems.
Role: Co-Director (2018-2020), Research Group Lead (2018-Present)
Project Prana Foundation
Project Prana Foundation was born with the mission to innovate with a holistic approach that was cost-effective and patient-centered.
The iSAVE (Individualized System for Augmenting Ventilator Efficacy) represented more than a collaborative effort to solve the immeidate challenge at hand. This innovation represents a deeper motivation to address inequities and inadequacies in healthcare.
Role: Advisor
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge
The mission of MIT Hacking Racism Challenge is to create a space for collaboration among those with diverse backgrounds to dismantle racial injustice in healthcare delivery and address the social determinants of health. Through the various tracks we hope to shine a light on current structures that propagate racism and implement sustainable solutions to promote racial equity. These hackathons are meant to pave the way for more extensive and exhaustive work across all facets of society. In order to build a better tomorrow, we begin our work today.
Role: Co-Founder (2020), Co-Director
wePool.AI
wePool AI provides a computational testing strategy that leverages Artificial Intelligence to predict a subject’s probability of testing positive for COVID-19, and uses it to segment test populations into distinct pools.
Role: Advisor
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Conversation with Darrell M. Gray II, MD, MPH
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Conversation with David Rhew, MD
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Conversation with Gil Addo, MBA
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Kickoff
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Hack 101 Nuts & Bolts
Veterans Health Administration iEX 2021: Breaking Boundaries: Using Innovation to Advance Health Equity
The Breaking Boundaries: Using Innovation to Advance Health Equity panel takes a look at how innovation can advance health equity and create the conditions in which everyone has an equal opportunity to live longer, healthier lives. On October 13, 2021, hear from innovators who champion health equity by addressing inequalities in their community and within VA.