Ridiculous Alum of the Day: Joel Selanikio

The Face of a Winner: Joel Selanikio

Today's ridiculous alum of the day is Dr. Joel Selanikio, practicing pediatrician and CEO and co-founder of DataDyne (Shout out to Claire Perry for suggesting Joel as a topic! :D) 

After graduating from the Haverford class of 1986, Joel went to work in finance on Wall Street. Yet, making a great deal of money was apparently not fulfilling for Joel, so after a year he went to Brown Medical School and became a practicing pediatrician. Yet, saving the lives of children was still not enough for him, so he went on a 2-year fellowship with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While at the CDC, he noticed that epidemic detection services in the developing world were horribly ineffective. He also noticed that cellphones were increasingly becoming prevalent. Logically, he created a cellphone app that helped aid workers track epidemics. This app, Episurveyor, soon became wildly successful and was soon declared to be the official software for tracking diseases by the World Health Organization (WHO). Clearly no slacker, Joel, through his non-profit Datadyne, made the app relevant beyond disease. For instance, it is now used to track election results and other governmental services prone to corruption across the world.

Joel's work has been amply recognized by the global community, as he has been named as one of the most powerful innovators by Forbes and Internet Evolution and he has won a 2009 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability and the 2009 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award for Healthcare IT.

To put it simply... he is ridiculously awesome!!! :D

For more information about Joel and his organization:
 http://www.datadyne.org/
http://web.mit.edu/invent/a-winners/a-selanikio.html

Ridiculous Alum of the Day: William H. Harris

For today's ridiculous alum of the day, I've decided (on the advice of a certain Claire Perry) to focus away from finance and instead look towards life-saving alums. After some quick research (aided greatly by Rilka Spieler and Josh Thorn), I found someone incredible: William H. Harris.

Harris thinking about ways to be an even bigger badass (ORS)

William (Bill) H. Harris, Haverford Class of 1949, received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently ended up completing his residency in orthopedic surgery at the famed Massachusetts General Hospital. After this robust education, his career really took off. 

To summarize, Harris pioneered pretty much everything having to do with hip surgery. Also, by everything... I really mean EVERYTHING. 

According to the Orthopedic Research Society (which gives out an award in Harris' honor):

"The contributions of William H. Harris, MD, to hip replacement are vast and range from the identification of the nature of osteolysis to the development of surgical techniques and implants. He invented the cement gun which replaced finger packing and improved cementing technique. He designed the first modular metal-backed acetabular component, which gave surgeons the ability to replace the polyethylene liner without having to remove the entire component."

Sounds impressive right? Well, that is just the first of four paragraphs detailing Harris' amazingness. In addition to his lengthy list of surgical accomplishments, Harris has published over 400 scientific publications and three textbooks relating to orthopedic surgery and arthritis and won the most prestigious awards in his field multiple times... each. Seriously... wow. 

Finally, Harris' accomplishments were so profound that Haverford actually named the Harris Wing in the INSC after him, in addition to having him as a longtime member of our Board of Managers. Cool!  

Harris and his wife (in the center) celebrating the opening of the Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center with their family (Haverford)

Also, on a personal note, I actually met Dr. Harris at a Board of Managers student lunch! It was exciting!

For more information about William H. Harris:

http://www.ors.org/awards_harris.html

http://www.haverford.edu/news/stories/23281/51