Sana Alumni
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.
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.
Jennifer von Briesen - Strategy Advisor
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.
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.
Ted Chan - Strategy 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, a leading education mobile apps company. 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 www.2bl.org.
Dr. Sayon Dutta - Operations
Dr. 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.
Louis Fazen - Operations
Louis is currently in his 5th year of the MD-PhD program at Yale University and is interested in quality improvement of community health delivery systems in developing countries. He has completed three years of clinical training at Yale School of Medicine, and is currently pursuing his PhD in epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. He is particularly interested in mobile devices as a platform for implementing existing community health worker guidelines and for providing decision support systems targeted at the community health worker level.
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.
Dr. Esteban Gershanik - Operations
Dr. 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.
Andrew Goldstein - Operations
Andrew is currently pursuing an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health with a concentration in Global Health as part of the Reynolds Fellowship program in social entrepreneurship and an MD at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. His career is focused on the development of delivery systems for health and development services in developing countries. Andrew has worked with community-based health and development organizations like the Millennium Villages Project, the Comprehensive Rural Health Project in Jamkhed, India, and now with Tiyatien Health in Liberia. This work has focused on community health worker training, management capacity, information systems, and operations. Andrew is also on the Student Advisory Committee for the Global Health Education Consortium and he has worked with Mount Sinai's Global Health Center on curriculum development.
Andrew is looking to embark on a career focused on building comprehensive, quality, scaled-up health services in resource-constrained settings, and he believes mHealth is key to efficiently tackling the challenges in these communities. His work with Sana is focused on developing training materials for implementing partners that enable them to setup Sana, train their team, and use our technology to enhance their services.
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.
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.
Sameer Hirji - Operations
Sameer is a Senior at MIT in the Bio-Engineering and Economics departments. 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 3-year NGO in Tanzania through MIT to support computer and English language curriculum to destitute blind schools and mentally challenged children. Sameer aspires to become a cardiologist and use these unique experiences in various international development projects to strengthen Sana.
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.
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.
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.
Dr. Cleo Maehara - Operations
Dr. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 clinics in rural Guatemala so pregnant mothers can give birth safely. Mr. Sharma was educated at Berkeley, Harvard and Michigan.
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.