The Sana Team

Eyal Abraham - Advisor

Eyal Abraham is Senior Programs Manager of technology sales at IBM. With 20 years in the high-tech industry, Eyal's experience ranges through the full product life cycle from R&D to customer deployment. In recent years Eyal has managed the business operations and professional services in a number of high growth business units, and has a specific interest in applying platform design concepts to developing extensible professional services. Eyal holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Tel-Aviv University and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Santiago Alfaro - Operations

Santiago Alfaro completed his undergraduate Industrial Design degree in his hometown of Bogotá, Colombia, at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University. In 2005, he moved to the United States to begin his Masters at Rhode Island School of Design. Upon completion of his Masters, he moved to Boston. After working in architecture for a year, he joined the MIT Media Lab in the fall of 2008 as a Research Assistant in the Object-Based Media Group.

Zack Anderson - Founder - Developer

Zack Anderson is a senior majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He has extensive experience with embedded systems, wireless communications, cellular technologies, RFID, neurobiological interfaces, and robotics for healthcare and defense applications. Anderson was a finalist in the DARPA Grand Challenge, and is a co-founder at a clean tech startup. He has worked at a handful of software firms such as Google and a defense contractor in Virginia. Anderson holds two patents-pending, and his work has been featured in several publications worldwide, including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired, and Technology Review. He plans on pursuing a future in entrepreneurship.

Archit Bhise - Operations

Archit Bhise is a student majoring in Economics and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at MIT. He is very passionate about international development efforts and hopes to grow this passion through social entrepreneurship. His academic research experiences include projects in the fields of biochemistry, genetics and pharmaceutical sciences for health applications and more recently, computational biology, conducted in labs from the Emory School of Medicine to the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. He has also had experience working with public service organizations in both the United States and India. He hopes his work with Sana will lead to a better healthcare system for the developing world.

John Blakeney - Developer

John Blakeney is an undergraduate studying mathematics at MIT. An experienced healthcare IT professional, John is focused on packaging Sana for rapid deployment and easy maintenance.

Jennifer von Briesen - Consultant

Jennifer von Briesen is a business strategy consultant with 15 years of management consulting experience with Fortune 500 clients. Jennifer specializes in collaborating with a variety of organizations in different industries to help them grow and innovate, and she has particular expertise in leading and managing large scale, strategic and international growth and transformation projects. Jennifer received her MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada and is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) and Project Management Professional (PMP). She has significant experience working with telcos and mobile carriers and is particularly interested in social entrepreneurship, telemedicine and healthcare initiatives.

Peter Bojo - Operations

Peter Bojo is a junior studying biological engineering at MIT. He has worked on research at Prof. Robert Langer's lab for over a year, focusing on delivering protein to cure a liver deficiency. He has also worked with InVivo Therapeutics, a biomaterials startup company, on research and development of biomaterials for spinal cord injury.

Steven Camina - Development

Steven Camina is a student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Previously, he has worked extensively with Java in developing a scenario analysis tool for a consulting firm in VA, and VBA in designing a data scraping program for traders in a financial firm in NYC. He is very excited to be part of the Sana team. Steven, originally from the Philippines before coming to MIT, is very much interested in entrepreneurial projects focused on helping less fortunate people in developing countries.

Leo Anthony Celi - Founder - Operations

Leo Anthony Celi, MD, MPH, MS, is an internist, an intensive care unit doctor, and an infectious disease specialist. After working in New Zealand for 5 years, Leo returned to Boston to pursue a master's degree in biomedical informatics at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology and a master's degree in public health at Harvard University, and a research post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His current research projects are in the field of artificial intelligence in medicine and strengthening health care systems in resource-constrained settings. He is now on staff at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center ICU and the Laboratory of Computational Physiology at MIT.

Ted Chan - Advisor

Ted Chan is a double bottom line entrepreneur who is currently an MBA candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the founder of the spin off SanaHealth startup. He is also the co-founder of Upward Mobility. He has worked for two leading professional services firms, holding both consulting roles and serving as Head of Information Technology for one firm. Ted also holds a degree in Organizational Psychology and History with High Honors from Swarthmore College, as well as a certificate in Emergency Management and Organizational Continuity from Boston University. He holds the Project Management Professional (PMP) designation from the Project Management Institute, and is a Disaster Recovery Institute Certified Business Continuity Planner (CBCP). He writes an influential blog about economics, finance and entrepreneurship at http://www.2bl.org.

Gari Clifford - Founder - Advisor

Dr. Gari Clifford recently joined the faculty at the Dept. of Engineering Science, Oxford University where he is also the Associate Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Healthcare Innovation. Prior to this he was a Principal Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Computational Physiology at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences where he managed a R01 NIH-funded research program, and contributed to the PhysioNet Research Resource. During this time he co-founded Sana while teaching for Nextlab. Gari's research is focused on providing open-source tools and public-access data for the evaluation of clinical problems. He has published widely on biomedical signal processing and medical data analysis, including a recent book and is an editor for the IOP's Physiological Measurements and BioMedical Engineering OnLine, a BMC Open-Access Journal with discounted publishing for developing countries. Gari retains affiliate research positions at MIT and Harvard, with an active interest in developing intelligent agents which integrate with the Sana platform.

Sayon Dutta - Operations

Sayon Dutta, MD is currently a clinical research fellow in Emergency Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a graduate student at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has Bachelor's degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Molecular Physiology and a Master's in Biology and served as an emergency medical technician and firefighter prior to medical school. After medical school, he trained at the Harvard Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital. After serving as chief resident during his final year of residency, he began a two-year research fellowship where his research interests focus on the use of applied technologies, such as GIS and mobile technologies in humanitarian emergencies and the utilization of medical informatics to improve patient care in the Emergency Department.

Rich Fletcher - Advisor

Dr. Rich Fletcher is currently a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab working in the area of wireless sensors for physiological monitoring and mobile health. A significant part of this research involves mobile phone applications as a tool for health interventions. After graduating from MIT, Dr. Fletcher founded several companies, including United Villages and First-Mile Solutions, which provide Internet services to rural areas in developing countries. With family roots in Colombia, South America, Dr. Fletcher has also devoted much of his life to developing appropriate technologies for developing countries and was co-founder of two related courses at MIT ("D-Lab Mobile ICT" and "NextLab") that provide students opportunities to design and deploy projects around the world.

Hamish Fraser - Advisor

Hamish Fraser is an expert in the development and application of medical informatics and telemedicine in poor settings and is responsible for the web-based medical record system that tracks several thousand HIV/AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis patients in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda and Lesotho. In 2006, Dr. Fraser and his team rolled out the next generation medical records system, EMR 2.0, at Partners In Health clinics in Rwanda and Lesotho. The Rwandan and Peruvian governments have also asked Dr. Fraser to expand use of the EMR system nationwide, and it will soon become standard for HIV/AIDS care in Rwanda and for care of drug-resistant tuberculosis patients in Peru. In November, Dr. Fraser's work won him the prestigious Homer Warner award from the American Medical Informatics Association. Dr. Fraser received his medical training primarily from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and related hospitals in Scotland. He holds a master's degree in Artificial Intelligence/Knowledge Based Systems from Edinburgh University. He completed a three-year fellowship in medical informatics split between MIT and Tufts-New England Medical Center, the focus of which was the design and evaluation of a computer program to assist with the diagnosis of heart disease.

Clark Freifeld - Developer

Clark Freifeld is a master's candidate in the New Media Medicine group at the MIT Media Lab. He is the principal software architect of the HealthMap outbreak monitoring system. Before joining the Media Lab, Freifeld was a Research Software Developer at the Children's Hospital Informatics Program at Harvard Medical School, where, in addition to co-creating HealthMap, he contributed to the Indivo personally-controlled health record, he developed the MAMI microRNA target predictor, and he created the Smoot systems modeling tool. Prior to his position at CHIP, Freifeld lived in South Africa for a year where he worked with Congolese refugees to develop a technology training and services company. He studied Computer Science and Mathematics at Yale University and his interests include Web-based user-interface design, data visualization, text mining, and technologies for developing countries.

Ben Geisler - Operations

Benjamin P. Geisler, MD, MPH is a decision-analytic modeler with experience in cardiovascular and oncologic modeling. He is a graduate of Charité Medical School in Berlin, Germany. Prior to his graduation, Ben was a research assistant at Charité's Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology, and Health Economics. Subsequently, he completed a research fellowship in decision sciences at Massachusetts General Hospital, working mainly on the economic evaluation of clinical trials. Most recently, Ben graduated with a master's degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. He is the author of an UpToDate card and several other publications, and an ad-hoc reviewer for journals such as "Annals of Internal Medicine" and "Circulation". Ben currently also serves as co-editor of "Value in Health", the official journal of the International Society For Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. The focus of his current research includes meta-analysis, probabilistic Markov modeling, cost-effectiveness and value of information analysis.

Esteban Gershanik- Operations

Esteban Gershanik is an Internist and Pediatrician, who also received his Master's in Public Health degree focused on Health Systems Management from Tulane University. He has previous experience working in international underserved populations through the nonprofit group Global Healing in Honduras and led efforts during Hurricane Katrina in disaster management / emergency preparedness through the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and Office of Public Health. Esteban is currently participating in a joint Harvard-MIT Biomedical Informatics Fellowship sponsored by the National Library of Medicine and has current projects focusing on the integration of clinical decision support tools in healthcare delivery. While continuing clinical work and his research during his fellowship, Esteban plans to learn how the newest technologies can be integrated into the healthcare delivery system in order to optimize care.

Ben Goldthwaite - Project Manager

Ben Goldthwaite is a software specialist with 20 years of industry experience. His professional interests lie in team leadership, project management, and software development process improvement. While working as IT Director at Sanmina-SCI, he observed the benefits of implementing Agile principles and Scrum project management. Ben is experienced in leading globally distributed development teams and in operational support of mission critical enterprise applications. Ben is currently working as Project Specialist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Geoff Graham - Operations

Geoff Graham is a biomedical engineer from Canada with medical device experience, both in government as a regulator and within the private sector in research and development and quality assurance. He is currently undertaking a Master of Public Health at Harvard University where he is specializing in health policy and economic evaluation. Geoff has a keen interest in applying technology to improve the health status of underserved populations and is involved in several projects with a focus on diagnostics and mobile phones.

Geoffrey Groesbeck- Advisor

Geoff is a consultant on international development initiatives at MIT that are activity engaged in resource-constrained regions and often driven by entrepreneurial interest in social ventures. He studied Japanese at Harvard and later worked in lean enterprise development at MIT. His work encompasses the creation of new programs throughout Latin America to provide tangible assistance to the bottom of the pyramid. Geoff is the advisor for MIT's student magazine on international development, Komaza, the highly regarded Global Poverty Initiative group, and the institutional relations officer and lecturer for MIT NextLab, which addresses large-scale development needs through mobile-based solutions. Geoff was previously executive director of international affairs and visiting professor at Mexico's ITESM, where his work focused on rural poverty reduction, migration alleviation and social development enablers. An expert on the social revitalisation of the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos, his works on the same regularly appear in leading magazines and journals.

Elliot Higger - Media

Ellen (Elliot) Higger is a sophomore pursuing a degree in film production and photography, with an emphasis in cinematography, at Emerson College. She is a photographer and has experience with film and digital formats for both still and motion images. Higger was awarded a full scholarship to study at the New Jersey Governor's School of the Arts. While at Emerson, she has worked on six film and video productions. In addition to her work with Sana, Higger is currently developing media for a national venue under the organization S.T.A.N.D. Higger is an active member of Boston's South End volunteer community as well as an "artist beyond the image" in areas of music composition and writing.

Casey Holmes - Operations

Casey Holmes is currently pursuing a Masters in Health Policy and Management at Harvard School for Public Health. Prior to attending Harvard, she worked as a research analyst for VDC Research in the Mobile and Wireless Practice. Casey received her undergraduate education from Cornell University where she studied communication, research methodology, and government.

Sameer Hirji - Operations

Sameer is a Junior at MIT in the bioengineering and Economics department. Born in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania, he is involved in various community development and capacity building projects in the fields of education and health care. He is the founder and Co-director of a 2 year NGO that he set up in Tanzania through MIT to support computer and English language curriculum to destitute blind schools and mentally challenged kids. He aspires to become a Cardiologist some day and use these unique experiences in development projects to strengthen Sana in the near future. He is involved in planning, strategy building and fundraising and represents the project both at MIT as well as outside.

Sidhant Jena - Operations

Sidhant Jena is currently a Kaplan Life Sciences Fellow and an MBA student at Harvard Business School. Prior to HBS, he worked as a senior engineer at Medtronic, where he was involved in the development of implantable cardiac devices. He also launched the company's Public Health Initiative, which brings together scientists, engineers, and business managers to explore preventive medical technologies for cardiovascular disease. He holds two degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology - a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Meghan Kane - Development

Meghan Kane is a junior studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. As an aspiring software engineer, she is a huge proponent of open source software. She particularly enjoys working on the Sana project, because of its integration of open source code, mobile development, and, most importantly, aiding the developing world. She was inspired to go into computer science during her intensive exposure to the field three summers ago while studying at the New Jersey Governor's School for Science on a full scholarship. She has been an intern at Pegasystems, a software company that specializes in creating solutions for large companies' business process management. Outside of her academic work and research, she is an officer in MIT's Science & Engineering Business Club's Technology & Entrepreneurship sector.

Aamir Khan - Advisor

Dr. Khan is the Executive Director of InterActive Research and Development as well as serving as associate faculty at Johns Hopkins University and the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. Dr. Khan trained as an epidemiologist at the Aga Khan University, and at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in the Division of Disease Prevention and Control in 1998, where he earned his PhD in International Health with a focus on infectious disease surveillance and vaccine trials. He has coordinated research on behalf of Johns Hopkins on the persistent excretion of poliovirus in seven countries, pneumonia surveillance in the northern areas of Pakistan, and measles surveillance and vaccine trials in Karachi. He is the Site Principal Investigator on the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) PneumoADIP funded grant for preparations for a pneumococcal vaccine trial in Karachi. He is also the Director of the Center for Injection Safety (CIS), Karachi, Pakistan (there are 6 centers in total; they, together, make up IRD), in collaboration with the Safe Injection Global Network and Becton Dickinson. Dr. Khan's significant experience in public health, and his broad global network will be critical in shaping the direction of the IIH program. It was his frustration with running into health problems that require engineering solutions that gave him the initial idea for the Innovations in International Health program. His organization will provide students with numerous design challenges, give feedback on the proposed designs, and provide resources to enable the students to run field trials on their prototypes in Pakistan.

Stephen Miles - Advisor

Stephen Miles is a Research Affiliate at the MIT Auto-ID Labs and Advisor to the Senseable City Laboratory Trash Track project and consultant with MIT Center for Transportation Logistics affiliate Zaragoza Logistics Center. Steve's research interests are in leveraging Automated Information Data Capture (AIDC) and advanced wireless tracking technologies to communicate more effectively about shared business processes in the physical world. His work with Auto-ID information exchange began in 2004, supervising MIT Auto-ID Labs Center for Transportation Logistics MLOG theses that documented the learnings from the GS-1/EPCglobal Data Exchange Work Group, and organizing the first interoperability tests of the EPC Information Services (EPCIS) specifications at the Auto-ID Labs. As a Research Engineer and RFID Evangelist for the group Steve organized the RFID Academic Convocations with a conference committee of RFID researchers from around the world, in collaboration with US federal and state agencies including the FDA and the California Board of Pharmacy, the European Commission Directorate General for information society and media (DGINSFO) and the China Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). The results of this collaboration are published in "RFID Technology and Applications" (Cambridge University Press, 2008), for which Steve served as Co-Editor. Prior to enrolling in the MIT Sloan Management of Technology Program in 2003, Steve was a founder of several startups in the computer services and network infrastructure business. As a consultant and entrepreneur, he has supported major international and industry organizations, Federal, state and city governments and network service providers. Steve retains his affiliate research position with MIT with an active interest in integrating AIDC and web based data services with the Sana platform.

Katherine Kuan - Developer

Katherine Kuan is a Masters of Engineering student at MIT in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. With experience at Microsoft Research Asia, Cisco Systems, UCLA, and Google Summer of Code, she is a software developer who enjoys working on user interface design and implementation. In summer of 2009, she traveled to the Philippines to work closely with the National Telehealth Center in order to make preparations for the first deployment of Sana. She is currently working on automated heart/lung sound diagnosis for mobile phones with Dr. Gari Clifford. Outside her studies, she is actively involved in the Society of Women Engineers, serving as President of her MIT section in 2008 and now as a Collegiate Senator for the national society.

Brett Lazarus - Developer

Brett Lazarus is a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He has been a developer on Sana since the summer 2009. He is also a member of the MIT men's gymnastics team.

Richard Lu - Operations & Developer

Richard Lu is a master's student in the Harvard-MIT HST program. He has a strong interest in applying technology to make healthcare more equitable and safer for patients and more enjoyable for practitioners. Richard is a budding programmer and joined the Sana project because he believes that delivering healthcare through mobile technology is the best way to help the developing world. Prior to coming to Cambridge, Richard practiced internal medicine at a county hospital.

Cleo Maehara - Operations

Cleo K. Maehara is a radiologist and a current fellow in the Biomedical Informatics Research Training program. His deep interest for telemedicine and teleradiology inspired him to look for new solutions to optimize the precarious health care in developing countries, reducing its costs and make it affordable to impoverish communities. His actual research is focused in improving decision support systems in computerized physician order entry systems in the radiology department at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Crystal Mao - Operations

Crystal Mao is a senior at MIT studying Biological Engineering and Management Science. Her involvement with Sana stems from a deep-rooted belief in the power of using collaborative, open source technology to improve access to and quality of healthcare for patients all around the world. Beyond Sana, her academic research experience has included projects at Harvard, MIT, and MGH in clinical trials design, synthetic biology, and regenerative stem cell therapies. She is currently working with MIT Sloan faculty to study environmental and financial regulation from a business perspective. Crystal has also developed broad-based business and legal exposure from working with leading technology companies and firms. Past internships at Genentech, WilmerHale, and Citigroup Investment Banking have allowed her to help international clients on issues spanning product strategy, pricing, patent prosecution / litigation, financial modeling, and M&A advisory.

Chris Moses - Operations

Chris Moses is a senior at MIT in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is an avid student of social entrepreneurship, and recently founded a non-profit organization for international leadership education. Chris is involved in program development, strategy, and building capacity for Sana's partner organizations, and has presented Sana at several competitions and conferences both nationally and internationally. He worked in the Philippines with local partners in January 2010 to prepare Sana for an upcoming pilot study.

Steve Moylan - Operations

Steve is a medical doctor and trainee Psychiatrist from Australia with a strong interest in mental health and healthcare delivery systems. He is currently studying for a Masters in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow. He gained his Medical degree in 2007 from Flinders University being awarded honours and the University Medal, and earned a Bachelors degree in Advanced Neurosciences in 2003. Steve currently works as a Clinical Lecturer with Deakin University School of Medicine.

Shreesh Naik - Operations

Shreesh Naik is an undergraduate majoring in Chemical-Biological Engineering & Biology at MIT. He is presently conducting research in the field of tissue engineering to improve the human heart model using nanotechnology applications in MIT’s Langer Lab. Shreesh has also conducted immunological and epidemiological research focusing on diabetes mellitus at the University of Washington Seattle School of Medicine and the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. He is passionate about improving health care applications in developing countries, and aspires to implement relevant technologies through his collaboration with Sana.

Roneeta Nandi - Operations

Roneeta is a research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a medical doctor, specialized in anesthesiology from Manipal University, India. Having practiced in public and private hospitals, in both rural and urban India, she understands some of the challenges faced by doctors in delivering care to the underserved. Along with her clinical work, she wants to contribute to initiatives that address such challenges.

Trishan Panch - Operations

Dr Trishan Panch is a medical doctor from the UK with an interest in health care and development of health systems in developed and developing economies. He gained his medical degree from Imperial College London and has completed specialist qualifications in Primary Care (MRCGP) and Obstetrics and Gynaecology (DRCOG). He is currently studying for a Masters in Public Health in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Manoj Patel - Operations

Dr Manoj Patel is currently studying an MBA at Harvard Business School. He trained and worked in New Zealand. Following a passion to apply technology to healthcare, he worked as a Clinical Consultant for Orion Health Ltd (http://www.orionhealth.com) . Manoj is also the founder and co-Director of Scrubs (http://www.scrubs.co.nz), a not-for-profit organization supporting resident doctors and junior health professionals in New Zealand.

Ankur Puri - Operations

Ankur is currently an MBA candidate at the Harvard Business School. Before joining HBS, he worked with McKinsey & Co. in India as a management consultant and was part of the founding team of the Public Health Foundation of India. He is passionate about applying the best of business and technology to challenges facing human development. He has studied Computer Science at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi.

Nicole Prowell - Media

Nicole is an independent documentary filmmaker living in Boston. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Experimental Documentary at Emerson College, where she completed her MA in Documentary Video in 2008. In addition, Nicole has studied filmmaking at FAMU in Prague, where she produced a short fictional narrative piece about the westernization of Eastern European culture. Prior to moving to Boston, Nicole worked in New York for IBM and for the Jacob Burns Film Center, a non-profit art house focused on promoting visual media literacy. Nicole has also worked as a Media Production Manager at Nextlab in the MIT Media Lab, where she traveled to the Philippines to film a documentary about a mobile diagnostics project. Her recent projects include a personal documentary about traveling across the country in search of happiness, entitled Happy Hunting, which screened at the 2009 Emerson Film Festival in LA and at the 2009 New Hampshire Film Festival. Nicole is a Board member of Women in Film & Video/New England, and a member of Connect the Docs.

Jhonatan Rotberg - Founder - Advisor

Jhonatan Rotberg is the founder and the director of the Next Billion Network program at MIT, and the instructor of MIT's NextLab course series. He is the Telmex Researcher at the MIT Media Lab and a Lecturer in the Media Arts and Sciences Program. A serial entrepreneur, he is experienced in the original conception and deployment of innovation, applications, and content in developing countries, and in building projects and organizations based on digital technologies. During his career, he has founded and sold various startups in the financial and high-tech sectors. His current focus is on designing innovative mobile technologies that help people reduce friction in their local markets from the bottom up, and on incubating ventures that allow them to scale and become sustainable in the emerging markets. Previous to joining Grupo Carso, Latin America's largest telecoms provider, he spent 7 years in the financial services practice of Accenture, and in the Investment Banking divisions of Baring Securities and Deutsche Bank. A native of Mexico, Rotberg is a graduate of Brown University.

Andres Monroy-Hernandez - Founder - Developer

Andrés Monroy-Hernández is a Telmex Fellow and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on social computing, in particular in the analysis and design of social software that supports collaboration. He created the Scratch website, a large online community where millions of people learn how to create and share interactive content. Andrés worked as a software developer in the library automation industry and at the Los Alamos National Lab. He holds a MS in Media Technology from MIT and a BS in Electronic Systems Engineering from Tec de Monterrey in México.

RJ Ryan - Founder - Developer

RJ Ryan is a graduate student in Computer Science at MIT CSAIL. He is an experienced software developer with in-depth knowledge of computer graphics, operating systems, real-time data processing, embedded systems, and web technologies. Ryan has worked on projects involving RFID, cellular technologies, machine learning, natural language processing, cryptography, and robotics. He has worked at a number of software companies such as Google Inc., and his work has been featured in publications such as Wired, Mass High Tech, and Popular Mechanics. Ryan, a Free software enthusiast, is interested in how to use technology to save lives.

Luis Sarmenta - Founder - Advisor

Luis Sarmenta, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab. Originally from the Philippines, he has personally experienced the revolutionary impact that mobile phones have had in the developing world, and thus deeply believes in the enormous life-changing potential of mobile phone applications. While working as a professor at Ateneo de Manila University, he founded and directed an R&D center that worked with the largest mobile operator in the Philippines and produced 30 commercially deployed mobile phone applications and services in its first two years. Sarmenta holds a PhD in EECS from MIT, and has done research and consulting work in a variety of topics including volunteer computing, grid computing, computer security, medical computing, educational computing, and others. He was a recipient of the ASEAN Young Scientists and Technologists Award in 2005.

Ankush Sharma - Operations

Born in northern India and raised in California's predominately immigrant 'central valley', Mr. Sharma is interested in the marriage of public health and innovation in technology as it applies to strengthening health systems and the delivery of care in the U.S. and globally. Sharma has worked on issues from access to healthcare for undocumented and refugee immigrants to coordinating Katrina relief efforts for his alma mater, but is proudest of Global HEED, an NGO he founded with friends in 2006, which builds maternal health clinics in rural Guatemala. Mr. Sharma was educated at Berkeley, Harvard and Michigan.

Peter Szolovits - Advisor

Peter Szolovits is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Professor of Health Sciences and Technology in the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and head of the Clinical Decision-Making Group within the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research centers on the application of AI methods to problems of medical decision making and design of information systems for health care institutions and patients. He has worked on problems of diagnosis, therapy planning, execution and monitoring for various medical conditions, computational aspects of genetic counseling, controlled sharing of health information, and privacy and confidentiality issues in medical record systems. His interests in AI include knowledge representation, qualitative reasoning, and probabilistic inference. His interests in medical computing include Web-based heterogeneous medical record systems, life-long personal health information systems, and design of cryptographic schemes for health identifiers. He teaches classes in artificial intelligence, programming languages, medical computing, medical decision making, knowledge-based systems and probabilistic inference. Prof. Szolovits has served on journal editorial boards and as program chairman and on the program committees of national conferences. He has been a founder of and consultant for several companies that apply AI to problems of commercial interest. He received his bachelor's degree in physics and his PhD in information science, both from Caltech. Prof. Szolovits was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the American College of Medical Informatics and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He also serves as a member of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.

Mark Yen - Developer

Mark is a third year undergraduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, with a focus on international development. Worked in Tanzania with MIT D-Lab (development lab) on water, health, and education projects and is currently studying abroad in the UK. He is also involved with Vala, a project that will link vendors and consumers in the informal market sector in India. He spent last summer working on mobile virtualization at VMware's Beijing office.

Boyuan Zhu - Founder - Developer

Boyuan Zhu is a senior majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Recently, he investigated market strategy for companies developing mashup deployment engines and tools for investing in emerging markets. In the past, Zhu has researched flash chip security, synthetic biology, and nanotube construction. He has a heavy interest in entrepreneurship and technology.