PandemicTech awards Raphael Garcia an Innovation Fellowship for 2020

Raphael Garcia, Operations Assistant at New Venture Institute (NVI) at Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia), has been awarded a PandemicTech Innovation Fellowship for 2020 to support his work designing and manufacturing innovative diagnostics for neglected tropical diseases. He has collaborated with Dr. Endalamaw Gadisa, a microbiologist at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), to develop a new low-cost rapid diagnostics test kit for Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL). This test kit utilizes a Micro-Culture testing method which reduces overall diagnostics costs while being more sensitive and faster than other commonly used testing methods for this disease.

Raphael has extensive experience in product design, prototyping, and product validation through the use of additive manufacturing (3D printing) and design thinking methodologies. He is a facilitator for the award-winning Flinders University New Venture Institute’s Innovative Manufacturing Accelerator program and the eNVIsion Business Incubator Program, which assists businesses in finding pathways to solutions and sustainable growth. He earned a B.Eng. in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Adelaide.

The PandemicTech Innovation Fellowship 2020 is a US $100,000 initiative to identify and support the most promising global health security innovators leading the fight against pandemic infectious disease threats. Launched in 2016, PandemicTech is a virtual technology incubator based in Austin, Texas, USA, that provides global health security innovators with the mentorship, expertise, and funding needed to bring their inventive ideas from concept to real-world execution.