Miiri Kotche is Clinical Associate
Professor
 at the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering.
Her focus is on undergraduate education
and medical product development. She
leads the Freshman Engineering
Success Program and runs an NIH-funded
bioengineering clinical immersion program
for undergraduates
with an
interest and medical product development.
Dr. Kotche is also the director
the MAD Lab
at the UIC Innovation Center, which
provides early concept and business
development
of medical devices for clinicians across
our campus.
(applause)
I'm a proud alumna of both UIC and UIUC. 
My father immigrated to the U.S. from Korea
to study electrical engineering where he met my mom,
the daughter of a dairy farmer, who was
studying genetics and is now a nurse.
So it probably isn't a stretch to say I
inherited their combined interest in
engineering
and health care to become a bioengineer.
I was working as an engineer and began
teaching college part-time,
and teaching really inspired me to
advocate for women in STEM,
to serve as a mentor, and to bridge
cultures. I came to UIC to earn my PhD,
and became involved with Engineers Without
Borders. My experiences in Guatemala
and Cambodia,
in rural and remote areas where access to
basic medical interventions is limited,
with no running water or reliable
electricity,
 helped to deepen my understanding
of the types of skills needed by
future engineers in order to contribute
to the global health challenges
of our time.
As an educator, we are training our
students
to develop solutions, to diagnose,
prevent
and treat illnesses using the latest science
and technology.
Some of my colleagues are pushing the
boundaries in areas of bioinformatics,
visualization, engineered biomaterials
and biomechanics. But we also share a
goal -
to create an inspired and well-rounded
engineer who has the potential to solve
issues related to illness and disease
using low-cost and simple methods that
can have large and far-reaching
impact to bring increased
access to medical care such as
mobile health technology
or rapid diagnostic devices.
One example
is a project assigned in a sophomore
class I teach called "Clinical Problems in
Bioengineering."
The class works in small teams to reach a
solution to clinically-motivated
real-world bioengineering problems.
One of the three problems over the
semester has a global health aspect
to investigate.
A few years ago, I based one of these
problems on a Gates Foundation challenge
to find a solution to measure the amount
of blood loss during post-partum
hemorrhage
which the World Health Organization
estimates contributes to 30 percent of
maternal deaths in Africa and Asia. I
invited Dr. Valerie Dobiesz,
UIC Emergency Medicine physician, to be
our guest speaker.
One student pursued this project after
the class, under her guidance,
and her team won an award at the
Engineering Expo competition.
Dr. Dobiesz and her colleagues have really evolved this project
to the next level.
And although I am not a part, I am really
proud that the kernel of this project
came from my class,
and that interested students and faculty -
including another one of tonight's
presenters, Dr. Geller - have carried it
forward.
As advisor for Engineering World Health, a
national organization that supports
bioengineers to
improve health care delivery in the
developing world, our students continue
to develop low-tech innovations.
Students have worked on fabricating
electrosurgical units and ECG simulators
for use in training around the world.
Student leaders teach freshman about
electronic components and how to solder,
build and test their boards.
These kits are then sent to programs in
developing countries to help train
technicians
to repair the nearly 40 percent of
critical medical equipment that is
either broken
or in need of replacement. Another project
these future engineers are working on
involves 3-D printing
assistive hand devices where the total
cost can be as low as $20.
Students can easily design and fabricate
the device,
test it, and make improvements as necessary,
a great exercise in applying the
engineering design process.
In March, I'm taking bioengineering
students to Vietnam
with the International Pediatric
Specialists Alliance for the 
Children of Vietnam,
founded by Dr. AiXuan Holterman,
professor of surgery at our Peoria
regional campus,
and a member of the UIC Center for
Global Health. Our goal is to do a
site assessment and evaluate ways we
might be able to address needs through
low-cost medical technology.
We hope to develop an inexpensive
laminar flow hood to reduce
contamination when mixing
medications and handling infectious
agents. One final example
of a global health project I'm working
on is as part on the wonderfully named
MAD Lab,
the Medical Accelerator for Devices Laboratory,
at the UIC Innovation Center, sponsored
by the College of Medicine
and the Office of Technology Management.
The interdisciplinary team
is comprised of graduate-level students
from engineering,
industrial design, marketing and medicine.
Our goal is to provide early
concept validation
for medical device ideas brought to us
from throughout the UIC community
and be a pipeline to help commercialize
great ideas through the Office of
Technology Management.
We're just closing our first call for
entries on Friday,
and not long ago completed our second
pilot project brought to us by Professor
Emeritus and
neonatologist, Dr. Dharmapuri Vidyasagar.
We worked on a project with Dr. Vidyasagar to
develop a very inexpensive
alternative to costly incubators for
low-resource settings in rural India.
Many medical clinics do not have
incubators for premature infants,
and we learned that hypothermia is a serious
risk for these children.
It is not uncommon to use plastic
grocery bags to wrap a newborn infant to
retain body heat.
Dr. Vidyasagar challenged us to find
an alternative to using these plastic bags,
a device that will passively retain heat
and be nearly as inexpensive as a plastic bag.
Lastly, some of the things that I love
about my job as part of the faculty here
at UIC
are the widespread opportunities to
collaborate with colleagues in a
engineering, medicine, business and design,
and the chance to examine some of these global
health problems
and bring students into the conversation.
While we examine the issues related to
these problems,
and try to find potential solutions, I
also hope to ignite the same curiosity I have
about the world in which we live with my
students so they carry this with them
when they leave the University
and move on to find their place in the
world. The more empathy in global context
our students have about their ability to
contribute to society,
in big ways or small, really helps to
prepare the next generation
 for the challenges ahead.
My goal is to help create inspired and
well-rounded engineers
who have the technical skills necessary,
but also the globally-minded
outlook required to have a lasting impact on
society.
Thank you. 
(applause)
