2017

2017

In January Mackenzie Carlson completed her Ph.D. in bioengineering at Stanford University. She took a celebratory vacation in Italy with her family and is excited to stay at Stanford Medicine as a postdoc in the department of neurology.

Noah Manning and Angela Cai were married recently, after meeting way back in their “Writing 5” course. Several ’17s attended their wedding, including Sam Libby, Ariel Klein, Katelyn Pan, Alexandra Minsk, and Jane Cai ’13 (sister of the bride).

Lastly, Ian Speers and Robert Halvorsen have founded a company together, Pacto Medical. Pacto Medical is introducing a compact syringe that lowers shipping and storage costs and reduces the environmental impact of single-use syringes.

The duo met during freshman year when they were living in French Hall in the River Cluster.

Ian received inspiration for Pacto Medical during a fellowship with Americares, a nongovernmental organization focused on disaster relief in Africa and the Middle East. During his fellowship Ian saw the challenges related to logistics and healthcare in low-resource rural settings. Specifically, he noticed supply-chain challenges were compounded by poor design.

At Dartmouth Ian was an anthropology and psychology double major. He was involved with the Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health, Medlife, the Dickey Center, and Dartmouth EMS. He also worked part time as an emergency medical technician in an ambulance in Vermont.

After Americares Ian received an M.P.H. at Harvard. During his graduate studies Ian had access to resources that enabled him to start Pacto Medical.

At Dartmouth Robert was involved with Frisbee, the Dartmouth Entrepreneurship Network, and the Digital Applied Learning and Innovation (DALI) lab. After graduation he received a master’s in human-centered design from Carnegie Mellon. He then worked in engineering consulting, then at Amazon, bringing consumer products to markets. Robert’s engineering training at Thayer gave him an interest in physical product design, which led him to partner with Ian on p re-filled syringes.

If you are interested in compact syringes or would like to catch up generally, Ian and Robert invite you to visit the Pacto Medical website and reach out!

—Eric Chen, 24036 Winter green Circle, Novi, MI 48374; echen027@gmail.com