Baltimore Innovation Week 2017

Param first experienced the inefficiencies of today’s manufacturing when setting up fabrication pipelines for orthopedic devices in rural India. Through his nonprofit, he provided orthopedic treatment to children with muscular disorders to change the stigma against disability. He turned his experiences there into FactoryFour, a software company creating the Internet of Manufacturing to enable manufacturers to take advantage of the future’s digital technologies.

In November 2015, Stacia became the creator and producer of Baltimore: The Rise of Charm City, a radio and podcast series that tells intergenerational stories of place and memory in Baltimore City. Baltimore: The Rise of Charm City is part of the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR)’s 2015 Finding America: Localore project and is produced in partnership with WEAA 88.9.

Varghese has worked for multiple agencies with the City of Baltimore since 2011 including the Comptroller’s Office, Mayor’s Office of Information Technology and most recently the Department of General Services as a Project Manager in the Business Process Improvement Office (BPIO). Previously, he managed projects for Oracle| Micros Hospitality, Agilysys Hospitality Software and Maryland Marketing Source. Several notable projects Varghese has managed include Free Public Wi-Fi at the Harbor, Historic Markets and Penn Station, Paperless Financial Disclosures and eFirstView a mobile floorplan system for registered pre-planned building with the Baltimore City Fire Department. Varghese’s role in the BPIO is to take the department totally paperless in 5 years!

Dr. Miriam Boer is the founder of Sonify Biosciences, an ultrasound-based hyperthermia device company based in the Alexandria LaunchLabs incubator in New York City. Dr. Boer founded Sonify Biosciences in 2012 after receiving her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland College Park, where she studied mechanosensation in bacterial cell membranes. Prior to that, Dr. Boer studied chemistry at New York University and worked as a color and flavor chemist in international research and development at PepsiCo.

Darius Irani is a sophomore at Johns Hopkins, currently studying Computer Science and Applied Mathematics & Statistics. Originally from Upstate New York, Darius has found his home in Baltimore through involvement in his social start-up Project Charmify that does community development, educational programming, and vacant space activation in neighborhoods across Baltimore. Darius would like to combine his passion for social justice issues and technical interests and skills in STEM, by using Big Data and Machine Learning to have social impact in cities and influence social policy.

Our team project, "ABSP - Active Bed Sore Prevention," was a creative concept and prototype model to prevent bed sores through a sensor-based pad that may be placed on an existing patient bed. The idea was to detect the location and magnitude of pressure differences, then use a feedback mechanism to create an air pocket at the target site in order to alleviate the pressure. Our presentation included a consideration of the potential for a large public health impact across the world, as pressure ulcers currently result in a largely preventable mortality risk and incur a heavy economic burden.

Hadley VanRenterghem, originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a sophomore at Johns Hopkins University majoring in Biomedical Engineering.

Founder, Ravi created the messaging platform that would become Sunrise Health after watching a close friend go through depression and seeing her suffer from loneliness between therapy sessions. Ravi has previous experience engineering AI products in multiple settings, from patient-doctor matching at a startup in India, to building out and selling a robotic vertical at a British multinational corporation. While a masters student at Johns Hopkins, he also helped found the VC firm A-Level Capital, raising its first fund and making multiple investments.