Profile of Rebecca Richards-Kortum

Abstract

Rice University bioengineer Rebecca Richards-Kortum returned from a 2005 trip to Malawi with a transformed view on the interplay between technology and cultural, economic, and social realities. While in a newborn intensive care unit, Kortum, now a mother of six children, witnessed premature infants struggling to breathe because the unit lacked technologies widely available elsewhere. She found an “equipment graveyard” full of assorted donated machines designed for high-resource hospitals. Richards-Kortum also met African children with AIDS who received antiretroviral drugs that required refrigeration, yet the children lived in villages without electricity. Rebecca Richards-Kortum. Image courtesy of Tommy LaVergne (Rice University, Houston). Impelled by such adversity, Richards-Kortum decided to go beyond geographic and disciplinary boundaries to solve challenges in global health. She and her team integrate advances in nanotechnology and molecular imaging with microfabrication technologies to develop inexpensive, portable medical devices that can be used in a variety of settings. In 2005 Richards-Kortum established the educational initiative Beyond Traditional Borders and two years later founded the Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health. The efforts have resulted in student-designed technologies that solve healthcare problems in the developing world. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, Richards-Kortum recently led the development of a new form of fiber optic endoscopy, described in her Inaugural Article (1). Its application to a low-cost, portable, and high-resolution endoscope can help improve early detection of cancer and precancerous lesions. Richards-Kortum grew up in Grand Island, Nebraska. She loved math and science in elementary school, but was unsure of her career plans. “There weren’t a lot of role models for scientists and engineers, especially for women,” she says. “I went to college planning to major in education and thinking that I would teach high school math and science.” She entered the …