URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

From left: George Nickolopoulos, former assistant director, URI Business Engagement Center, Erik Brine, Air Force Colonel, and executive director, National Institute for Undersea Vehicular Technology, Pete Rumsey, director, Rhode Island Innovation Campuses for the Rhode Island Commerce Corp., Tao Wei, associate professor, electrical, computer and biomedical engineering, Alex Hornstein, director, VentilatorProject.org.

Ultimately, here is what the collaboration and all of the volunteers accomplished: ‰ They developed in just a matter of days a just-in-time manufacturing operation at URI’s Memorial Union to collect, sanitize, sterilize, re-program, test, refurbish and prepare the units for shipping. ‰ Collected 850, mostly used CPAP and BiPAP machines from generous Rhode Islanders and others around the country.

“To pull a project like this together, with no budget and almost total reliance on volunteers, and have this kind of success is unheard of.”

- Erik Brine

who played a major role in process engineering for the project. “At a time when it was easy to stay home and be scared, all of our volunteers, including many students and faculty, were part of a team that required ingenuity.” Brine said the University’s response was amazing. “When I asked for one thing, I got 10. And when we got hungry, the URI Ram’s Den was there with food and beverages. I can’t tell you what a morale booster that was.” Making sure non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and industries mesh well on a single project can pose great difficulty. And, with academic and government units, procedures often take longer, according to Brine. “To pull a project like this together, with no budget and almost total reliance on volunteers, and have this kind of success is unheard of,” Brine said. “To put these units on planes and get them out in under two months is just phenomenal. You can only do something like this at a place like URI.”

‰ Refurbished 650 machines, and placed them into inventory,

‰ Provided 50 machines to the Rhode Island Department of Health,

‰ Provided 42 machines to the Rhode Island National Guard, and

‰ Shipped 519 units, now in clinical service, to countries in need such as Nigeria, Indonesia, Peru, Nicaragua, Haiti, Bolivia, The Philippines, East Timor, The Bahamas, Iraq and Mexico.

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