Life of a Global Health Engineer at OmniVis

At OmniVis, we pride ourselves on being learners from a diversity of backgrounds all contributing to our common mission of elevating humanity in healthcare. We are a motivated team who learns from each other and persists through challenges to help everyone on the team grow and reach their fullest potential.

Today, our Employee Spotlight showcases our Global Health Engineer, Jordan Florian! Meet Jordan and learn about his journey to OmniVis.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

My name is Jordan Florian and I work for OmniVis as a Global Health Engineer. I studied at Taylor University where I got my Bachelors degree in biology and pre-medical studies. I then went on to get my Masters in Science in Global Health from the University of Notre Dame. That is where I connected with OmniVis. We were given a large number of potential companies and people to work with for our thesis and OmniVis really stuck out to me because of their approach on developing new technologies to approach particular global issues. I did my thesis in Bangladesh with OmniVis implementing their device and ran studies on the accuracy of their device with water samples from the field versus the lab.

What does your day-to-day look like? What are your key responsibilities for OmniVis?

Now that I have graduated, I became a Global Health Engineer for Omnivis. That basically means that I help out with our field trials and field studies, research and design prototyping, and aid with manufacturing of our device, our concentrator, and our disposable. A lot of my work involves 3D design in SolidWorks, 3D simulation using plastics, and a lot of rapid prototyping. I am able to implement our ideas into a physical product, present them to the team, get feedback, and continue on the iterating process.

What is your favorite thing about working at OmniVis and what do you think makes OmniVis special from other biotech startups?

My favorite thing about working for OmniVis is that I get to do something new everyday. There’s always a new complex problem to be solved with device development. I enjoy that there are immense learning opportunities and projects, unlike a job where your work may be repetitive and minorly iterative. What we do is new because our CEO invented our underlying technology and I get to build something fun, novel, and creative around that. That’s the great thing about it. We get to design, research, and develop something everyday that explores a new issue, a new problem, or a new part of our device. Also, it doesn’t matter what part of the company you work (or what your job role is) because everybody’s ideas are valid, helpful, interesting, and taken into account. I’ll present an idea and people from finance, science, engineering, and logistics will all provide feedback that originates from their unique perspective. That perspective is based on their education and their current understanding of OmniVis and their own personal lives. We also make sure to visit the field so we can design our product with the user and not just in the scope of the lab to integrate different perspectives.

OmniVis is different from other biotech startups because of our core mission. There are massive health disparities all around the world, even within our own country, and cholera is one of those diseases that affects people with a lower socioeconomic status. Therefore, there are not a lot of market players for a cholera diagnostic in water, but that didn’t stop Katherine from wanting to come up with a way to address cholera at a global scale. At OmniVis, I have grown in my confidence in global health and engineering. I really appreciate being able to come to work everyday and knowing my opinion and my work is valued by the team.

What has been your favorite project you have been working on and why?

My favorite project that I have worked on has been the recreation of our diagnostic device. Our device used to be centered on an iPhone and recently we have gone to an independent design. This was a difficult decision to make because it required starting from scratch with certain elements. I’ve been able to work with the Purdue University engineering team, our internal team, as well as interns during this process to make the device appealing from a visual standpoint, make the device functional from a biological and engineering standpoint and make the device economical all while integrating human-centered design. Working together with all different areas of our company and being able to see the progress and the integration has been amazing and fulfilling.

Fun Fact About Yourself!

I am way too obsessed with Notre Dame football as anyone at the company can tell you. I play hockey and lead the league in penalty minutes. I also climbed Pikes Peak with Michelle last week and we almost passed out from oxygen deprivation so that was fun.