The world has many problems, but few solutions—too few good, effective, scalable solutions. MIT Solve seeks to change this. Solve, “a community of cross-sector leaders devoted to identifying and supporting solutions to actionable challenges through open innovation,” is helmed by Executive Director Alex Amouyel, who recently popped over to our Boston studio for a chat with Gaurav Rohatgi, Co-Lead of EPAM Continuum’s Life Sciences Vertical.
Amouyel explains that Solve is a “marketplace for social impact innovation,” to which Rohatgi asks: Why is such a marketplace necessary? In this free-flowing conversation, Amouyel talks about many topics: How her biochemistry background helps her communicate with her STEM-based network, a Solver team's cool childhood development milestones app, and the profound importance of optimism in social innovation. She also provides important details about the Challenge Design Workshop we’re co-hosting with Solve, in our Boston studio, on Tuesday, January 28, at 3 p.m. (register here). We hope you enjoy the dialogue and invite you to join us for the workshop—and perhaps a chance to have your own conversation with Amouyel.
Host: Pete Chapin
Editor: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon
About the Author
Gaurav RohatgiPRINCIPALGaurav is passionate about developing technologies and products that improve people’s lives. He has deep experience in life science R&D, clinical and consumer medical products. He discovers technical or business strengths and risks within the supply chain of a fast-moving project and architects and orchestrates valuable solutions.
At Continuum, Gaurav has made significant contributions to hundreds of projects across various industries. He led the development of microfluidic platforms for culture and perfusion of micro physiological systems, an appliance for the destruction of regulated medical waste, a medical ICU monitor, and pre-packed chromatography columns for drug discovery and manufacture.
Gaurav is a named inventor on over 15 patents and applications. He co-invented and led the development of the low-cost drive system in Insulet’s OmniPod insulin management system to its successful 510k clinical trial. He holds MS and BS degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT.
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Ken GordonChief Communications SpecialistKen makes EPAM Continuum’s work visible to the necessary people. He creates superlative content, works with colleagues to do the same, and employs social networks to share it widely.
A card-carrying humanist, Ken co-founded QuickMuse, the improvisational writing website, and JEDLAB, the Jewish education community. He has written for TheAtlantic.com, the New York Times, and many other pubs.
Ken has an English degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MA in English from the State University of New York at Albany. He framed both diplomas long ago, but can’t seem to find them now—a fact he considers all-too-human.
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