Jeeshan Chowdhury (2011 - 2012)

Canada

For Jeeshan, innovative technologies are the key to making healthcare sustainable in Canada and accessible in the developing world. From the beginnings of his studies, Jeeshan has strived to place himself in the interface of different disciplines. His vision is that multidisciplinary teams of physicians, engineers, and scientists will create novel technologies and platforms to radically change the way we deliver healthcare.

Jeeshan has always been fascinated by science and technology. His parents, immigrants from Bangladesh, nurtured a spirit of learning and discovery among their four sons in appreciation of the freedoms and opportunities they gained in Canada.

His academic career has been based on a multidisciplinary approach to technology. In high school, he published his first academic paper on the use of the Internet by patients’ families. As an undergraduate, he was the sole Canadian in the 2002 NASA Astrobiology Academy, where he worked on the effects of gravity on mammalian biology, and his class also published a paper on the feasibility of a human mission to Mars. With a team of medical and engineering students, he flew on a parabolic flight with the European Space Agency to study the effects of weightlessness on vision. Before going to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Jeeshan was part of an interdisciplinary team of the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) working on improving healthcare access and sustainability with microfluidic platforms.

Jeeshan holds an M.Sc. in Diagnostic Imaging from Oxford and a B.Sc. in medical sciences from the University of Alberta. He is in the final stages of an MD/DPhil program at the University of Alberta and the University of Oxford. His doctorate in the Department of Surgery at Oxford has focused on the business case for the use of information technology in radiology departments to improve access to diagnostic services.

He has held leadership positions in local and national organizations, starting with his high school student council, and including two years as Vice President of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, and five years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Most recently, as Junior Dean of his College at Oxford, he was responsible for the welfare and discipline of over 300 undergraduate and 200 graduate students.

Jeeshan believes that one of his strengths is the ability to communicate across disciplines and that he is thus well positioned to be the ‘connector’ of disparate elements and people for the development of innovative solutions. He is convinced that in both developed and developing countries, the current means of delivering healthcare are unsustainable. In developed countries like Canada, demographic shifts and rising costs will overburden the current system. In the developing world, although effective treatments for many diseases exist, most people cannot access them.

During his year as a Sauvé Scholar, Jeeshan will address affordable solutions to this problem. Building on his experience in healthcare technology, he will develop a start-up enterprise to create and market innovative web and mobile-based solutions for both physicians and patients.

Jeeshan’s extracurricular interests and activities are as multidisciplinary as his academic pursuits. He has rowed for his college and trained with the Oxford University Modern Pentathlon Team. He has been a member of the ski patrol in Jasper, Alberta and, although he only learned to snowboard recently, he quickly developed a passion for it. He is an avid photographer, often engaged to photograph various fundraisers and lectures. He has contributed both articles and photos to the student papers at Oxford and the University of Alberta. He takes every opportunity to travel, enjoys discovering new landscapes to photograph and new forms of gastronomy, and is proud that he has gone through three passports in the last five years.

Mother Tongue

Bengali, English, French

Country of origin

Canada

Country of Residence

Canada

Profession

Medicine, Information Technologies, Diagnostics