#SoCaltech: Brian Nguyen

“I have a penchant for taking something scarce and making it abundant. When I came to Caltech, I wanted to study how to build tools to do that.

“Last summer, I was offered the opportunity to join a Caltech-based startup, StrokeDX, that’s trying to put the power of a high-performance diagnostics device in the hands of every EMT. Classifying stroke early and accurately saves lives. Currently, a patient can wait up to two hours to get a CT scan or MRI at a hospital. Instead of bringing the people to the machines, what if we brought the machines to the people?

“Working at a startup required me to wear many hats. Some days, I researched the medical device markets to help drive our pricing strategy. Other days, I hacked away on an app to test our prototype sensor. There was never a day I was solving these problems alone. The founders, Alex Ballatori and Shane Shahrestani (PhD ’21), are medical students at USC. They're the best founders you could ask for: brilliant, energetic, and honest. Since they understood the space so well, they said, ‘Here are all the problems we see. Given everything we have, how do we solve the most important ones?’ Alex guided me in building a product to fit the patient's needs, and Shane advised me on improving the technical aspects of the sensor.”

Brian Nguyen, a senior from Brooklyn, New York, studies electrical engineering. In summer 2022, he was an intern at StrokeDX, a Pasadena-based startup founded by Caltech alumnus Shane Shahrestani (PhD ’21), which is devoted to finding faster ways to diagnose strokes to save more of patients’ brains.