Rice360’s Global Health Fellowship program is finding ways to engineer hope

When Mary Seifu Tirfie graduated with a degree in biomedical engineering from Addis Ababa University in 2023, she wasn’t just earning a diploma — she was stepping into a global mission. Today as a global health fellow at Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies, she’s part of a pioneering effort to design affordable medical technology for low-resource settings. For Mary, the fellowship represents more than just a job.

“It’s exactly what I hoped to do after graduation, combine engineering with impact,” she said. “This has been a dream opportunity.”

Rice360’s postbaccalaureate Global Health Fellowship is a hands-on program designed for early career engineers passionate about health equity and innovation. Fellows spend one to two years working on real-world health challenges, particularly in regions with limited access to medical technology. Mary, who asked to be identified by her first name to reflect Ethiopian naming customs, is now in her second year of the program and already making an impact.

Her project focuses on designing a low-cost neonatal gastric suction device — a potentially lifesaving tool for newborns who suffer from fluid buildup in the stomach, which can cause aspiration and death if not treated promptly.

“In high-resource hospitals, you have built-in vacuum systems, disposable tubing and regulators,” she said. “But in many low-resource settings, none of that exists. Our goal is to create something safe, portable, effective and affordable.”

The idea for the device originated in the Dominican Republic, where Mary traveled during the first year of her fellowship to conduct a needs assessment.

“We partnered with Dr. Angelica Floren, a clinician who works both in the Dominican Republic and Miami,” Mary said. “She saw firsthand the discrepancies in hospitals in developed countries and those in low-resource settings and how a simple lack of suction equipment was endangering newborns. That became the seed for this project.”

Working out of Houston, Mary continues to collaborate closely with clinicians in the Dominican Republic and other stakeholders around the world.

“We started by brainstorming, prototyping and testing,” she said. “Tubing turned out to be one of the biggest challenges. The kinds used in U.S. hospitals are expensive and hard to get in low-resource areas, so we had to identify safer, more accessible alternatives.”

Beyond the lab, Mary has been an active voice in the global health community. She’s presented her work at the American Pediatric Surgeons Association Annual Meeting, the UTMB Global Health Symposium, the Houston Global Health Collaborative Conference and Rice360’s Innovation for Day One, where her poster won second place.

“Each time I share the project, I get new feedback that makes it stronger,” she said.

The next milestone for her team is optimizing the design for usability studies and exploring manufacturing partnerships to bring the device to market.

“Ultimately, we want to see this used in NICUs in places that need it most,” she said.

Raised in Ethiopia, Mary said she knew she wanted to pursue engineering, but it wasn’t until university that she realized how her technical skills could be a force for social change.

“I’ve always loved building things,” she said. “But I also wanted to help people. Biomedical engineering was the perfect middle ground.”

Being part of Rice360 has opened her eyes to what’s possible.

“I didn’t even know ‘global health engineering’ was a thing until I joined this fellowship. Now I know it’s a growing field with so much opportunity.”

Her long-term vision? To return to Ethiopia and help expand the biomedical innovation ecosystem in her home country.

“There’s incredible potential back home,” she said. “I want to take everything I’ve learned here and create something like Rice360 in Ethiopia — something local, sustainable and led by the people who know the needs firsthand.”