Helmet Modification to PPE With 3D Printing During the COVID-19 Pandemic at Duke University Medical Center: A Novel Technique.

I am a spine surgeon who provides surgical management of cervical, thoracic  and lumbar spine conditions, including cervical myelopathy, herniated discs, deformity, stenosis, tumor and trauma.  I provide both minimally invasive procedures as well as traditional surgical techniques.

Eric Richardson is a Professor of the Practice in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University and the Founding Director of Duke Design Health. His research and teaching focus on medical device design and manufacturing in global and underserved markets. He emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches and academic-industry collaborations. In 2018, Richardson transitioned to Duke from Rice University, where he was the Founding Director of the Global Medical Innovation Program, which develops and implements medical technology in emerging markets. He was also the Associate Director of the Texas Medical Center Biodesign Fellowship, a program that offers venture formation curriculum to create digital health and medical device startups. Prior to Rice, he was a Principal R&D Engineer at Medtronic in California, where he developed transcatheter heart valves that currently serve over 500,000 patients worldwide. Richardson has several publications, patents and book chapters related to cardiac medical devices, and is involved with several startups.

Professor Gall’s research aims to develop a fundamental understanding of the relationship between the processing, structure, and mechanical properties of materials.  His scientific contributions range from the creation and understanding of shape memory metals and polymers to the discovery of a new phase transformation in metal nanowires.  His current research interests are 3D printed metals and polymers, soft synthetic biomaterials, and biopolymers with structured surface porous networks. 

In addition to his research he has consulted for industry, the US Military and the US Intelligence Community, and served as an expert witness in multiple patent and product litigations.  Finally, he is a passionate entrepreneur who uses fundamental scientific knowledge to hasten the commercialization of new materials and improve the effectiveness of existing materials.   He founded two medical device start-up companies, MedShape and Vertera who have commercialized university based technologies in the orthopedic medical device space.

Paul Fearis joined Duke after 28 years in the medical device design consulting industry with PDD, Sagentia and latterly his own consultancy Clinvue.

Originally trained in Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art and in Mechanical Design at Cranfield Institute of Technology in the United Kingdom, Paul helped to define and bring to market a broad range of medical devices for both multinational corporations and startups in the United States and around the world.

Paul specializes in human-centric product design with particular emphasis on front-end innovation and product specification processes, including ethnographic observational research and the identification of unmet, underserved and unarticulated clinical/stakeholder needs.