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How can you take the principles and methodology from mechanical engineering and apply them to healthcare? Having spent much of lockdown conducting research into making a table-top mobile vaccine printer for his PhD, our guest this week, Dr Morteza Sarmadi, is a great person to ask.&nbsp;

00;00;09;19 - 00;00;40;07
Roland Ellison
Hello and welcome to the Lexicon. With me, your host, Roland Ellison. Our guest this week is Dr. Morteza Sarmadi. Morteza recently finished his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT. We asked Morteza about how he got into mechanical engineering in health care and how the two fields overlap. So let's get into it. Welcome, Morteza, to kick us off. Please tell us a little bit about your your background, who you are and what you do.

00;00;40;10 - 00;00;43;16
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Hi. Thanks for having me in this podcast.

00;00;43;23 - 00;00;44;16
Roland Ellison
Very welcome.

00;00;45;01 - 00;01;05;10
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
And it's very excited to be here. I'm Morteza. I recently finished my Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT and I worked in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer, who is the co-founder of Moderna and the most cited engineer in history.

00;01;05;12 - 00;01;16;12
Roland Ellison
I was just reading about him on Wikipedia. He has like over 300,000 citations and I don't know how many patents he has as well against his name. It's kind of a big figure.

00;01;16;19 - 00;02;05;12
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
And just mind mindblowing career and yeah, I was really fortunate to work in his life and that was an amazing time. And after that I joined the company called the Iota Medical Products and I currently work as a research and development scientist. And in terms of what I do, broadly speaking, both at MIT and even in this company, I work on a new cutting edge technologies that can improve human health and contribute to a safer, more, more, more desirable future for our society and for us as humans.

00;02;06;21 - 00;02;16;22
Roland Ellison
Okay, well, that sounds like an exciting field. So for listeners who may not be familiar with your field and its novel technologies, or is that right?

00;02;17;05 - 00;03;05;10
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yeah. So what we do is to use engineering tools and engineering skill sets in order to design and make new technologies that can improve human healthcare and improve the standard of care or treatment of patients. Some of some examples include basically creating new medicine for patients that are more convenient to use or developing new medical devices that can improve the delivery and discovery of drugs or medicine in general.

00;03;05;18 - 00;03;18;23
Roland Ellison
And so what initially sparked your your interest in in this area and how did you how did you end up pursuing it as a career? I know you said that you recently graduate with your Ph.D. Where did it sort of start?

00;03;18;25 - 00;03;59;25
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
The turning point for me was back in, I would say, 2016 that a friend of mine, her mother, was diagnosed with brain cancer. And I was close to and my friend and I could see that how devastating, how hard it is for for them for for for her family to just undergo those treatments. And I realize that, like human health care and and like humans, human's well-being has as a unique and has like a significant impact on society and on an individual as a whole.

00;04;00;03 - 00;04;15;05
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
And so I realized that there is a huge opportunity to basically to use engineering skill sets and to come up with new innovation technologies that can improve treatments and improve human health care.

00;04;15;14 - 00;04;36;24
Roland Ellison
Very personal story that kind of got you started then. And so, you know, in your work in in healthcare, how do you see I'm sure it's an area that's advancing really quickly. How do you see healthcare evolving kind of over the next next decade? And are there any particular breakthroughs that you've seen that you're you're particularly excited about?

00;04;38;11 - 00;05;23;05
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yeah, I think the next maybe next decade would be substantially different, would be a lot more. We would see a lot more of artificial intelligence in different tasks involved in healthcare, in diagnosis and discovery, in design and innovation of medical devices. I'm very excited about application of machine learning and artificial intelligence in general. There are a lot of promising technologies that and a lot of promise around using artificial intelligence.

00;05;23;22 - 00;05;41;04
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
And I know that there are a lot of companies or startups working on these technologies. So I believe in the next decade we will see a completely different world, at least from a healthcare standpoint and what we see today.

00;05;42;14 - 00;06;07;19
Roland Ellison
And so do you think that those advances will be more in the diagnosis or sometimes in the delivery or just in terms of the sort of way in which people interface with a health care professional? Or do you think there'll be less kind of human to human contact and, you know, there'll be sort of chatting to eye doctor on their phones or so What do you how do you see it working in practice?

00;06;07;21 - 00;06;54;12
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
I think the two two areas that I see a huge promise for A.I.. One is in data management and data storage. And that what I mean by that is that artificial intelligence will potentially help us to make better decisions based on a medical records and patients data. We'll be able to see one day that patients can just talk to an eye doctor and get really robust, solid advice on what medical decisions, what medical steps they need to take or like what type of medications they need to they need to take.

00;06;55;01 - 00;07;42;20
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
So one is in terms of just interactions with an eye doctor and the two is in in terms of making a complicated medical diagnosis, for example, in pathology and science of like I, pathologists have to basically make decisions based on like hundreds of images or other types of digital digitalized data. And in those situations, I see that I can be an additional support, additional and basically assistance to making these sort of complicated medical decisions.

00;07;42;28 - 00;08;07;08
Roland Ellison
Obviously, there's been a lot of discussion of AI over the last few months, and I think particularly people will have concerns about, you know, sharing medical data with AI and the potential for, you know, insurance companies, bad actors, people to get access to that. I mean, do you have any kind of view about some of those those ethical concerns that people may raise around that?

00;08;07;09 - 00;08;46;01
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yeah, I think that data privacy is obviously number one concern. And when we think about like digital, digital health care professional or like an AI doctor as thing, and I think hopefully there are going to be hopefully if there are there are going to be regulations around data sharing and more strict rules around like how much of data can be accessed by third parties or for the providers.

00;08;46;14 - 00;09;00;24
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
They will certainly help improve the privacy. But I would say that that's number one concern, that I know there are more. There are some efforts going to improve that input data privacy.

00;09;01;05 - 00;09;20;05
Roland Ellison
Just in terms of projects that you've worked on recently, particularly, I guess, in your work at MIT. Can you tell us a little bit about something that you've worked on, like a particularly challenging project that you've worked on and what you learned from it and how it kind of developed your understanding of the field?

00;09;20;14 - 00;10;03;13
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yeah, that's a good question. We recently actually published our work in Nature Biotechnology and it's a very it's a top journal in biotechnology and in bioengineering and in that I'm especially proud of that work because it was published in what was basically most of the work was done while I was a student and it was at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and we had very little access to lab resources and could do very little experiments.

00;10;04;10 - 00;10;17;10
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
And so there was a lot of restrictions, and that made it really hard to keep the project forward and keep working on the project.

00;10;17;27 - 00;10;25;15
Roland Ellison
So that caused a lot of delays then, too, to the research that you were doing, or did you find kind of ways, ways to get around those challenges?

00;10;26;09 - 00;10;58;18
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yes, that certainly caused some delays. But what what I was I was fortunate to be able to do some part of the work in my dorm, actually. So some of the resources, some like tools on the machinery took them into my just just a little tiny student dorm. And I managed to somehow keep working on the project even though there was a lot of lab shutdown and stuff.

00;10;59;08 - 00;11;29;25
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
But yeah, I think what I learned is that it's important to just be to push your project forward. And regardless of whatever happens, if there is a bigger meaning or there is a huge potential for what you do, it's important to really never give up and just keep it pushing the project forward. Even though there are a lot of things happening in the world that are not necessarily positive.

00;11;30;28 - 00;11;51;28
Roland Ellison
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it must have been. I can understand your personal investment in it if you were, you know, doing stuff in your in your dorm during lockdown, working on this this pet project, I guess. And so what was a sort of the outcome of of that project? And, you know, what did it kind of discover or what what new learning did you have from it?

00;11;52;09 - 00;12;28;07
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Is a YouTube video that I've made about this this technology. And basically the video explains the technology in very simple language, in plain language. And so hopefully that will also help to to communicate what this project was trying to do. But in a very short brief language, what this technologist aims to establish is a new method of producing vaccines and COVID vaccines, but also other types of vaccines.

00;12;29;16 - 00;13;03;14
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
So we developed a small machine which is as large as and like a coffeemaker, not a big at all. And what is this device does is that you basically feed the vaccine into this device. And it is there there is some automation happening. There are some like a robotic devices involved. And as the output, what you get is a vaccine patch, which you can just apply on your skin and then get the vaccination.

00;13;03;25 - 00;13;37;23
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
So we based so we basically simplified the huge process of vaccine fabrication and production, which usually happens in giant facilities that are like millions of dollars that have cost millions, millions of dollars to operate. We simplified that process into a really tiny robotic machine, which is like a 3D printer, and this device can be shipped to different locations, for example, a pharmacy or an airport.

00;13;38;14 - 00;14;05;24
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
And what is really interesting about this technology is that by shipping this device in two different locations, we are able to provide the vaccination sites in-house at both places, as opposed to having as opposed to being limited to these vaccine production facilities, which are costly and very basically very, very slow.

00;14;06;24 - 00;14;13;01
Roland Ellison
And so that is kind of needle free vaccination as well as it because it's just applying it via a patch.

00;14;13;25 - 00;14;29;11
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yes. Yes. And end up being able to simplify all that production process and that complicated process into just that embedded machine, which is basically it is very mobile.

00;14;29;11 - 00;14;52;23
Roland Ellison
And yeah, particularly for the developing world and health care programs in remote areas, I guess that has huge, huge implications. What would a cool project to have worked on? And so as an R&amp;D scientist, you must feel that need to kind of balance innovation with with practicality in the kind of boring commercial realities of life that we will face.

00;14;53;20 - 00;14;58;05
Roland Ellison
Can you talk about some of the factors that you consider when when striking that balance?

00;14;59;18 - 00;15;33;27
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yeah, that's a great question. So something that I learned during my PhD and then later working as an R&amp;D scientist is that there could be a lot of like a breakthrough technologies out there, but they can't be commercialized because then there are a lot of things beyond the technical side that need to be considered. And some of those the criteria that we use to tell if something can be commercially viable, number one is scalability.

00;15;34;13 - 00;16;09;15
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
So it's important if the technology is a scalable and can be mass produced or produced in a scale that is commercially viable. And two is safety, basically. And there might be some technologies, but there are some safety concerns around them. And as a result, do you want to make it into a into a product? So one is the scalability, two is safety and obviously three is costs.

00;16;10;03 - 00;16;35;08
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Sometimes we end up with technologies that are revolutionary and can do extraordinary things. But because the cost is just so huge and the foundational technology that would enable that, that is specific innovation are just so costly. They decide not to further pursue the technology as into a product.

00;16;35;15 - 00;17;02;29
Roland Ellison
Yeah, that is is really interesting is so much to consider isn't even if you have a fantastic idea you know the realities of bringing it to the wider market into life are so so complex. So MIT obviously is known as, you know, one of the best places in the world to study engineering and science. And I know you've been involved in in mentoring students yourself and even high school students yourself.

00;17;03;27 - 00;17;15;20
Roland Ellison
How did your education prepare you for your current role and what advice would you give to students interested in pursuing a career in mechanical engineering? At the moment?

00;17;18;01 - 00;17;54;14
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Sure. So, um, in terms of advice, what I would what I would suggest is to try to just talk to as many people as possible who are also studying mechanical engineering or any other major. They're interested in just trying to get a better exposure of what what the major really looks like and do more research, more literature review, and if they can also it's helpful to do some projects.

00;17;54;23 - 00;18;26;04
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
So maybe short term or long term projects in their field just to get a better sense of if they are really if they really if they are a good fit for that specific major, sometimes they might only have look here on clear vision. But when you start to do things, you just have a better understanding. If but if the project is a good fit for us or if the major is a good fit for us.

00;18;27;09 - 00;19;04;03
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
And um, in terms of how my education prepares me, I think my might has a very rigorous engineering curriculum. The research is also is, is very translational, which means at least in the lab, that I did my Ph.D., the goal was always to develop a product rather than a product that can be translated later to the to to a clinical setting, rather than just working on something and trying to publish a paper in a good journal.

00;19;04;21 - 00;19;20;01
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
So I think it's important to do to care about whether what they are working on is important to society and if it can translate into a product at some point.

00;19;20;19 - 00;19;44;07
Roland Ellison
Sustainability obviously is a growing concern in across the world, I guess, and in all industries. And how do you kind of approach sustainability in your research and development and how do you see the field that you're in? The novel technologies field play a role in, in addressing some of the challenges of sustainability around the world?

00;19;46;06 - 00;20;19;00
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Yeah, that's an important question. I would I would say that sustainability is more it's a new factor that now has been introduced and a lot of the technologies that we work on have to be such that the don't end up any hazardous waste for, for the environment. And, and that's also true for especially true for the vaccine patches that I mentioned.

00;20;19;00 - 00;20;56;26
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
It could be a good example of that. We always make sure that the technology we work on has minimal harmful effects on on the environment and also the it is also degradable is biodegradable. So I think the field of biodegradable materials have huge potential in view of the new and global sustainability considerations and I think something that is worth pursuing.

00;20;57;27 - 00;21;17;23
Roland Ellison
Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's always going to be a challenge in healthcare where you've got things like disposable gloves and masks that we were wearing it, COVID and all of those lateral flow tests that were, you know, going into the bin and maybe probably not being recycled. I mean, there must have been a huge amount of landfill produced during that period.

00;21;17;23 - 00;21;33;19
Roland Ellison
And I think it was a challenge to have sterile and biodegradable products in the future. That's something that would be really interesting to see develop, how you could use some biodegradable products in in healthcare care. Great stuff.

00;21;33;19 - 00;21;36;22
Dr Morteza Sarmadi
Morteza Kay, thanks for having me.

00;21;37;19 - 00;21;56;21
Roland Ellison
Big thanks to Mortaza for his time this week and to all of you for listening. If you or someone you know is doing something interesting in the field of engineering or science and you'd like to feature on this podcast, please get in touch to link to one of our our website. In the meantime, please make sure you leave a review and subscribe to future episodes.

00;21;57;06 - 00;21;59;10
Roland Ellison
Until next time, it's good bye for now.

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