Hi everyone!

Welcome to my blog, I’m glad you could make it!

My name is Suran and I am a rising junior majoring in Bioengineering and minoring in Global Health Technologies. My journey into global health began my freshman year, when I enrolled in the class Intro to Global Health. It was in this course, where I learned the stark global health disparities across low-resource settings all across the world and what Rice360 was specifically developing to help address these issues. Through this course, I developed a passion to contribute to a world where equity and access to healthcare are fundamental rights and discovered the unique position I was in to employ my biomedical device knowledge to positively impact a global population.

This newfound passion for global health was solidified during my spring semester, taking Appropriate Design for Global Health where I had the opportunity to work with 5 other undergraduates in which we redesigned a neonatal bag valve mask for simpler assembly to increase patient outcomes in low-resource settings. This was truly a formative experience that taught me almost everything about the engineering process for designing devicea tailored to low-resource settings. Taking this class and working on this project only further developed my interest in designing medical technology aimed at reducing global health disparities. I am incredibly grateful for the unique opportunity to enhance global health technology this summer as a Rice360 Global Summer Intern in the beautiful city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Aryun and I have already begun working together with students from the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) where we are working to further develop four global health initiatives. The first two are a part of Rice360 which includes a temperature sensor for NICU newborns with adjustable thresholds and the second is a gastroschisis bag for NICU premature newborns that consist of repurposed IV bags for intestinal housing. The second two are projects that are from DIT which include a portable infant transport incubator that can operate in the event of power loss and a UV light photo-therapy device to treat newborns with Jaundice.

In addition to developing and improving upon prototypes of these projects, we will also be visiting different hospitals in Tanzania, ranging from more urban, busy locations to rural locations with fewer resources. I hope to gain a new perspective on healthcare treatment across different regions in Tanzania, and hopefully discover new ideas to address specific needs.

I could not be more excited contribute to such innovative and impactful global health technologies, working with like-minded students from halfway around the world! I look forward to a fruitful summer, fully immersing myself in a rich new culture, and making life-long friends in the process.

Thank you for joining me on my journey, or in Swahili… Asante sana!

– Suran