I had applied to only a select number of universities for my graduate studies, but my heart was set on McGill – plus McGill was the first to give me an offer, so that made them stand out! I was deeply attracted to the international quality of the faculty, the intensity of the research, as well as the history of the place. I remember as an undergrad reading about the foundation of the Montreal Neurological Institute and the work of Dr. Wilder Penfield and Prof. Brenda Milner. McGill is one of the most important neuroscience universities in the world, and it was an honour to do my studies here.
I recall in my first year walking into the McLennan Library and being in awe of all that I had access to. I later loved browsing the shelves of the Schulich Library and the McIntyre Medical Sciences library. I’m sad that much of the printed literature is now digital – better for the world, but I think a physical space has an imposing way of making us understand the magnitude of knowledge that is available to us.
Once, when I was going through a difficult time, one of my advisors relayed to me the motivational story about the Chinese term for “crisis” – that it is made up of two characters, the first meaning “a bad thing” and the second “an opportunity”. I learned much later that this is a mistranslation, but the motivational quality of it stayed with me.
Those two words, crisis and opportunity, certainly came to mind one evening in March 2020 when I was reading about the devastating impact of the coronavirus in Italy, and how treatment was often stymied by the lack of life-saving ventilators. It blew my mind that, in a rich country, the lack of a fairly old medical device technology was causing people to die.
I was humbled and inspired by the outpouring of support from donors, medical professionals, and all the participants who accepted the challenge with such energy and commitment.”
That sentiment plus the support of many colleagues at the Montreal General Hospital Foundation and the Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre, and collaborators at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto, gave me the idea and the impetus for the Code Life Ventilator Challenge, a global contest to seek out a design for a low-cost, easy-to-use and easy-to-build ventilator which could be deployed anywhere in the world to save lives.
Ultimately more than 1,000 teams from 94 countries entered the contest and I was humbled and inspired by the outpouring of support from donors, medical professionals, and all the participants who accepted the challenge with such energy and commitment.
We are now well on our way to achieving the goal of a low-cost, easy-to-use and easy-to-build ventilator for COVID-19 patients around the world. I think that speaks to our collective resilience – that when things seem to go wrong is in fact the time when you can practice resilience, to chart a course forward, and to allow yourself to strive and rise again.
McGill by itself is a name, and just a name, and in fact James McGill didn’t ask to have an institution named after him; it was to be the Royal Institute for the Advancement of Learning and Knowledge. I think that spirit of the never-ending quest for learning and knowledge, of rising and staying afloat, of being “small” but a big player, I think some of these qualities have contributed to my life, career, and outlook.