Available GHREAT Mentors

Andrew Browne, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor, Ophthalmology

Location: Panama

Estimate Cost: $3000 per person

Dr. Browne conducts cross disciplinary basic and translational research drawing on his background in Electrical Engineering and Ophthalmology. His work focuses on a few core areas which have a significant amount of overlap. While his research is largely targeted to vision science, he remains open to conducting research pertinent to any living system.  Advanced Imaging Modalities for the developing world – Dr. Browne’s retina practice utilizes a variety of ophthalmic imaging technologies based on confocal laser scanning microscopes and photography. We are developing a new generation of portable tools with the goal to enable advanced imaging in the developing world.  This past summer he worked with a team of medical students who went to Panama to capture standard photography of the eye to screen for eye disease. In future years he hopes to implement increasingly more sophisticated tools (not more expensive) in this mission.The team partners with the NGO Floating Doctors who's mission is to reduce he present and future burden of disease in the developing world, and to promote improvements in health care delivery.  

Michele B Goodwin, JD

Chancellor’s Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Biotechnology & Global Health Policy

Location: Central and South America

Professor Goodwin's global health policy work spans organ, sex, child pornography, and marriage trafficking. Her work includes on the ground field research in India, the Philippines, South Africa, interviewing and documenting black market trading in the human body for sex and marriage. Her current project focuses on maternal health specifically focused on the criminalization of pregnant women in central and south America. She is one of the leading international voices on organ transplant policy and its global implications as well as one of the early writers about the social, medical, and legal tensions involving assisted reproductive technology. She is the President of Defense for Children International-US and Director of the Center for Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Hillard Kaplan, PhD

Professor, Chapman University, School of Pharmacy, Economic Science Institute

Location: Bolivia

Potential projects include: 1) Diabetes Education, Prevention, and Management. This project could provide education, examine detection and treatment from a systems perspective (providers, patients, hospital supports), and evaluate effectiveness of the interventions. 1) Diabetes Education, Prevention, and Management. This project could provide education, examine detection and treatment from a systems perspective (providers, patients, hospital supports), and evaluate effectiveness of the interventions. 2) Cardiopulmonary testing. This project could assess the viability of our field-adapted bicycle protocol and perhaps compare age-matched Californians on a comparable protocol. 3) Tuberculosis detection and in community treatment; This project could pilot approaches to family and community based detection and supervised treatment (this may be the most challenging) 4) Reproductive Health: This project could look at strategies for reducing teen pregnancy or HPV (this would also require lots of development).

William Tang, PhD

Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Location: First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, Liaoling Provence, China

Estimate Cost: Dependent on stay.  For more detail see below

Title: Rhythm and music-augmented physical therapies for people with Parkinson's disease.
Description: It has been shown that musical therapy improves neuronal connectivity of healthy persons and clinical symptoms of neurological diseases like Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and depression.
Despite the plethora of publications that have reported the positive effects of music interventions, little is known about how music improves neuronal activity and connectivity in afflicted patients. In this research, we will study the neurological changes in patients with Parkinson's disease before and after physical therapies augmented with music with strong rhythms. Daily training regimens with 35-minute session for 4 consecutive weeks will be administered to patients with stage 1 or 2 Parkinson's disease. Patients will be divided into three groups: (1) listen to the rhythmic music while sitting quietly, (2) walk on a treadmill with predefined speed, and (3) walk on a treadmill while listening to rhythmic music, pacing in synchrony with the beats. Brain activations with functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy(fNIR) and EEG will be recorded at baseline (before trainings), post-training, and 4 weeks after trainings are concluded (retention). These data will be compared to gait velocity, cadence, and stride length as well as the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) that will also be recorded during those three time points. Data analyses will be performed at UCI after the trip. The hypotheses this research is aiming at: (1) the effectiveness of physical therapy for patients with Parkinson's disease is enhanced by augmenting with auditory stimuli with rhythmic music more than physical therapy alone or listening to music alone. (2) The improvement is quantifiable with standard UPDRS and correlated with neuronal activations as measured with fNIR and EEG. 

*PREFERRED Fluency in Mandarin*

Location: The data collection will be performed at the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, Liaoling Provence, China, for a duration of 9 weeks. The retention tests can be done by the local collaborators if the students cannot stay for the full 9-week duration, which will reduce the time to 5 weeks.
Estimated cost: round-trip airfare ~$1200, lodging for 5 weeks ~ $2,000 (or $3.600 for 9 weeks), daily meals and misc expenses ~$800 (or $1,440 for 9 weeks) ==> total for 5 weeks = $4,000 or for 9 weeks = $6,240.