Dr. Thomas Milner serves as the director of UCI Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic and professor of Surgery and Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Milner is one of the early investigators in photomedicine, having made seminal contributions in both surgery and diagnostics. With Institute Medical Director Dr. J. Stuart Nelson, he is one of the inventors of the Institute’s dynamic cooling technology of tissues that has substantially improved the practice of many laser dermatological treatments.
Dr. Brian Wong is a specialist in facial plastic surgery with a practice that encompasses both aesthetic and reconstructive procedures. His research interests at UCI Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic are in biomedical engineering, specializing in medical device development and laser applications in medicine. Dr. Wong has over 100 publications and his research is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DOD) and the Health Science Partners.
Dr. Govind Rajan is an anesthesiologist who specializes in critical care medicine at UCI Medical Center. He received his medical degree from Maulana Azad Medical College and has been in practice for 29 years. He also speaks multiple languages, including Hindi.
Amir A Hakimi, B.S.
Amir Hakimi obtained his B.S. degree in Neuroscience at UCLA. He attended medical school at the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. During this time, he was involved in clinical and translational research under the mentorship of Dr. Brian Wong. Amir has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Amir programmed a medical application for the iPhone to expedite the diagnosis of ocular injury.
Meet Other BVC-19 Team Members
Dr. Matthew Brenner is a clinical professor at the UCI School of Medicine. He conducts research in pulmonary medicine, critical care, sleep apnea and cyanide poisoning and antidotes at UCI Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic.
William Armstrong, M.D.
Dr. William B. Armstrong’s primary clinical interests are in head and neck cancer surgery, thyroid and parathyroid surgery. Dr. Armstrong is interested in minimally invasive procedures to treat head and neck tumors, including endoscopic and robotic approaches to head and neck and thyroid tumors.
As the UCI director of the Anesthesiology Residency program, Dr. Katherine McCartney is responsible for the “4U” Didactic program. The program is dedicated to education for each resident class. She was honored as a 2020 Physician of Excellence by the Orange County Medical Association.
Dr. Said Elghobasi is a distinguished professor at the UCI in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Rick Ho is a senior graphic designer for Patina Restaurant Group based in New York City. He designed the Bridge Ventilator Consortium (BVC) logo. Previously, Rick was a graphic designer at The Orange County Register in Orange County, California.
MJM Madou, Ph.D.
Dr. MJM Madou developed the VentiVader with his team, including Mr. Ehsan Shamloo, Dr. Alexandra Peribikovsky and Dr. Horacio Kido. The technology is being transferred to student groups at UCI and at the John Hines Foundation for further optimization and commercialization for use in developing countries. Dr. Madou’s team is working with Phil Felgner ‘s team on integrating Coronavirus antigen and antibody arrays with CD fluidics for a complete point-of-care (POC) COVID testing solution.
Dr. Tryphon Georgiou is a UCI distinguished professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He was educated at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and the University of Florida, Gainesville. Dr. Georgiou was awarded the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Control Systems Society four times. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) and a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA).
Dr. Amitabha Bandyopadhyay is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Presidency College and M.S. in Biochemistry from Calcutta University. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Bandyopadhyay oversaw the development of products by incubated companies of IIT Kanpur. The products were commercialized on a large scale, which includes the intensive care unit (ICU) Ventilator, N-95 grade masks and an advanced disinfection chamber.
Dr. Elliot Hui, an associate professor of Biomedical Engineering at UCI, received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley. In 2008, he joined the faculty at UCI, researching microfabrication and microfluidics to control biological systems dynamically at the microscale. He is a recipient of the 2013 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award and the 2014 Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation (JALA) Ten Breakthroughs in Innovation. His research laboratory contributed to the Bridge Ventilator Consortium (BVC) by developing the first servo-motor driven open-source ambulatory bag rescue ventilator.
Vincent Zaballa is a Ph.D. student in the Hui Lab at UCI. He was previously a Whitaker Fellow at Imperial College London in the Medical Device Design and Entrepreneurship module and an Entrepreneur Fellow at Fannin Innovation Studio. Vincent worked with a team of researchers in the Hui Lab to develop a 3D printed ventilator setup.
Hong-Lin Du, M.D., Ph.D.
Trained in anesthesiology, Dr. Hong-Lin is the president of Nihon Kohden OrangeMed, Inc. in California. His team recently developed the NKV-550 ventilator that can be operated by clinicians outside of contagious patient rooms to reduce the chance of caregivers’ exposure. The NKV-550 is the first of its class cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He used his expertise to provide as-needed advice to the Bridge Ventilator Consortium (BVC) project.
Lily Chen
Lily Chen is a medical student at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. In 2017, she graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Bioengineering, which fueled her passion for integrating medicine and technology. With the Bridge Ventilator Consortium (BVC), she was involved in drafting prototypes and participating in discussions to refine goals, designs and scalability challenges.
Ehsan Shamloo Aliabadi, Ph.D.
Dr. Ehsan Aliabadi earned his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at UCI. Experienced in product development, chemistry, microfluidics, DNA and protein assay development, he serves as a senior scientist at a start-up company developing a point of care serology test for COVID-19 detection.