Kathleen Sienko, PhD

Dr. Kathleen Sienko is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mechanical Engineering. She founded GHDI in 2008 and has led approximately 150 undergraduate and graduate students in conducting clinical observations at hospitals in Ghana, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Kenya, and China. Under Dr. Sienko’s leadership, students have identified and defined thousands of clinical needs, and developed successful medical devices like a blood salvage device for maternal hemorrhaging (Ghana), traditional adult male circumcision device (Uganda), and subcutaneous contraceptive insertion device (Ethiopia). For Dr. Sienko, GHDI is about training a new generation of engineers to collaborate with stakeholders to define problems and develop and implement solutions to address essential health care challenges. GHDI was awarded the ASME Engineering Education Donald N. Zwiep Innovation in Education Award in 2018.

Julia Kramer, PhD, MPH

Dr. Julia Kramer is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Her research investigates the development, application, and education of engineering and design approaches to create products, services, and systems that aim to address global equity and global health challenges. Dr. Kramer is a graduate of the University of Michigan and participated in GHDI as an undergraduate student. She was a member of the 2013 cohort in Ghana where she and her team conducted a clinical needs assessment at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. After her experience with GHDI, Dr. Kramer went on to pursue a masters in public health and a PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where she co-founded two organizations (Visualize and the Reflex Design Collective) that support social justice and promote equity through design. After her PhD, Dr. Kramer was appointed Director of Human-Centered Design for the Innovations for Choice and Autonomy project at the University of California, San Francisco before returning home to the University of Michigan. 

Dhanu Thiyag, MD, MPH

Dr. Thiyag is a biomedical engineer and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan with training in global women’s health research as a postdoctoral fellow and as an NIH Fogarty Fellow. Her research focuses on designing and clinically evaluating innovative medical devices for women’s health that can be disseminated to improve health care in low-resource settings in the U.S. and abroad. This expertise is crucial as medical devices not designed for the context of use in low-resource settings are typically neither sustained nor disseminated.