Population Health

May 6, 2024

Initiative selects four graduate students as summer Social Entrepreneurship Fellows

Image of student engaged with a virtual reality headsetThe University of Washington Population Health Initiative announced today the selection of four graduate fellows for the summer 2024 cohort of the Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship program, which is run in partnership with the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, CoMotion and the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance.

This year’s fellows will spend 10 weeks over the summer producing innovative solutions and contributions to support the work of multidisciplinary projects developed by University of Washington researchers.

The students selected for this summer’s program are:

Name Project School Program
Ashwin Nishad Washington Passive Samplers – Air Pollution Detectors College of Engineering Global Innovation Exchange (GIX)
Niharthi Muddada Juno – Empowering Mothers College of Engineering Human-Centered Design & Engineering
Amaya Gatling pHastCam – Neonatal Birth Asphyxias Schools of Medicine and Public Health Global Health
Xinxin Feng Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Community Mental Health Intervention Integration into Neighborhood House College of Education Learning Sciences and Human Development

Program faculty and staff have developed a structured workplan to support the fellows through their projects, with additional access to mentors and subject matter experts.

The fellows will work collaboratively as a team, contributing their expertise to all four projects, with a primary focus on a specific project. The fellows will support the generation of new ideas to support financial sustainability of projects while preserving the societal impact of their work.

Each of the summer 2024 projects has been developed by UW researchers with the purpose of benefiting disadvantaged populations and improving population health:

  • Washington Passive Samplers – Air Pollution Detectors, a device that is a low-cost passive method for monitoring long-term average levels of light-absorbing carbon air pollution in polluted indoor environments (Julian Marshall, Civil & Environmental Engineering).
  • Juno – Empowering Mothers, a platform with evidence-based medical guidance and interactive, user-friendly support, including breastfeeding advice for new mothers (Laurent Bollag, Obstetric Anesthesia and Fetal Surgery Anesthesia).
  • pHastCam – Neonatal Birth Asphyxias, a portable, affordable device for blood pH measurement and screening in low-income countries to address birth asphyxia (Krystle Perez and Greg Valentine, Pediatrics).
  • Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Community Mental Health Intervention Integration into Neighborhood House, whose goal is to integrate mental health care into community-based social service organizations to improve access to low barrier, culturally relevant mental health care (Lesley Steinman, Health Systems and Population Health).

Learn more about this fellowship program by visiting its web page.