Population Health

June 1, 2023

Initiative announces selection of summer 2023 Social Entrepreneurship Fellows

Image of student engaged with a virtual reality headsetThe Population Health Initiative announced the selection of five graduate fellows for the summer 2023 cohort of the Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship program, which is run in partnership with the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, CoMotion, School of Public Health and the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance.

The five fellows will spend 10 weeks over the summer producing innovative solutions and contributions to support the work of preexisting, multidisciplinary projects developed by University of Washington researchers.

The students selected for this summer’s program are:

Name Project School Program
Lakshmi Ravali Kothuri Scaling Emerging Solar Technologies to Pressing Climate Change Clean Energy Goals Foster School of Business Business Administration
Kunal Patel ExerciseRX School of Public Health Nutritional Sciences
Shaan Chopra Developmental Screening Tool College of Engineering Human Computer Interactions & Health Informatics
Luyanda Ngongoma SkinVAX Schools of Medicine and Public Health Global Health
Caroline Kasman Equinox School of Medicine Health Metrics Sciences

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 five projects while focusing primarily on one of the projects. 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 2023 projects has been developed by UW researchers with the purpose of benefiting disadvantaged populations and improving population health:

  • Scaling Emerging Solar Technologies to Pressing Climate Change Clean Energy Goals, an improved manufacturing pathway (Devin McKenzie, Materials Science and Engineering)
  • ExerciseRX, a software platform that evaluates patients’ activity levels, identifies barriers, develops customized exercise regimens and tracks activity (Samuel Browd, Karla Landis, Cindy Lin and David Bridges, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation)
  • Culturally Responsive Technology Based Developmental Screening Tool, a clinical intervention for developmental assessment in primary care settings (Kendra S. Liljenquist and Julie Kientz, Pediatrics, Health Systems and Population Health and Human Centered Design and Engineering)
  • SkinVAX, low volume intradermal delivery adaptor technology for malaria vaccine (Sean Murphy, Felicia Watson and Caroline Duncombe, Microbiology)
  • EquinOX, addressing racial discrepancy in pulse oximetry (Lingga Adidharma and Nicole Gouhin, Engineering and Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery)

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