By Peter Santa Maria, MD, PhD, Professor and Division Chief, Otology & Neurotology, Co-Director, Pittsburgh CREATES and Lisa A. Goldstein, MJ
This year marks a meaningful inflection point for Pittsburgh CREATES: three individuals trained in the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID) tradition are now part of our team. That’s not coincidental.
The CBID program, like Stanford Biodesign, is built on a needs-first philosophy: deep clinical immersion before any solution is considered, mandatory global health exposure, and a bedside-to-bench-to-bedside model that produces innovators who can work across advanced and low-resource health systems alike. That lineage is exactly what CREATES needs as we grow.
Minh Tran, a CBID Class of 2026 graduate recruited directly from Hopkins, will be stepping in, replacing Mohit Singhala, PhD. Originally from Hanoi, Vietnam, Minh brings both a global perspective and deep technical enthusiasm to the position. She said, “I’m passionate about medical device research and development, especially more accessible healthcare systems in low-resource settings and global health.” That focus on accessible, fabrication-forward innovation fits CREATES’ mission precisely, and her CBID global health training maps directly onto our international work through SPARK Gorongosa.
Minh said her primary goal is to leverage her clinical immersion and technical experience to ensure CREATES’ innovations are clinically meaningful, technically feasible, and commercially attractive, bridging the gap between academic research and market-ready products. “Furthermore, I hope to contribute to build and expand an entrepreneurial ecosystem of iterative ideation and innovation,” she added.
Abhiram Cherukupalli, MSE, MHS, MD, currently a rhinology fellow, brings a surgeon’s perspective to innovation, exactly the kind of clinician-engineer pairing that makes needs-finding meaningful rather than theoretical. His work at CREATES will focus on identifying unmet needs at the intersection of rhinology and surgical technology, serving as a bridge between the operating room and the prototyping bench.
Mark Schuweiler, MSE, MD, joining as an incoming intern, represents the next generation of CBID-trained talent that CREATES is actively cultivating.
The concentration of CBID-trained talent at CREATES reflects a broader vision that my co-director Carl Snyderman, MD, MBA, and I share — that Pittsburgh has extraordinary surgical and scientific talent but has historically underperformed in translating that talent into real-world innovation. CREATES exists to close that gap. The methodology we’re embedding — needs-based, interdisciplinary, and value-driven — is the same framework now being deployed internationally through SPARK Gorongosa, our collaboration with the Gorongosa Restoration Project in Mozambique. There, CREATES and Pitt’s Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery are working alongside SPARK Global and Mozambique’s Ministry of Health to train local innovators and deliver ENT care to underserved communities.
Minh’s focus on low-resource fabrication solutions is a direct expression of that same ethos, the same principles that guide a rhinology fellow identifying a device need in Pittsburgh guide a Mozambican healthcare worker identifying a gap in pediatric ear care in a rural clinic.
That local-to-global thread is what makes this moment worth writing about.