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I'm Kelly Ferguson and I'm a graduate student in the School of Public Health. I'm discovering
how exposure to plastics in the environment impacts pregnancy and newborns. I'm a graduate
student and research assistant with the Department of Sociology and Public Policy. We're providing
national policy makers with information to help address issues of inequality and poverty.
I work with the University of Michigan Water Center in the Graham Institute where we study
environmental stressors in the Great Lakes. When you support the University of Michigan,
you support the creation of bold, new ideas. My name is Hannah Cheriyan. I am a junior
in Biomedical Engineering. I work in the ECMO lab. ECMO stands for Extracorporeal Membrane
Oxygenation, which essentially means outside of the body. It's an external method of introducing
oxygen to the body. Before ECMO, there wasn't really an option. ECMO is a completely game-changing
device. I am in the ECMO lab because I am an ECMO survivor myself. I was three days
old... I was put on ECMO while my body had time to develop. Here I am, a 25-year-old
medical student working with Dr. Bartlett who invented the procedure. So I was on ECMO
as a newborn. The umbilical cord was, like, around my neck and my respiratory system was
not really functioning. So I was airlifted to Mott actually (laugh) and I was put on
the ECMO machine. I didn't come to Michigan, like, looking for this lab initially. And
when I, like, looked it up, I realized that Dr. Bartlett was the man who made this machine
in the first place, this machine that saved my life. And I just...I couldn't believe it...it
felt like coming full circle. When I was first born, I was diagnosed with pulmonary persistent
hypertension, and this machine is what saved my life. At Michigan alone, we've saved thousands
of babies -- worldwide, tens of thousands-- so it's been a really high-impact innovation.
We're looking at a bunch of ways of using the modifications of the original machine,
modifications of the original techniques. One of the most interesting, it's called the
artificial placenta. So if a baby is born significantly early or very, very premature,
you can keep this fetus alive at an age when that was just not even conceivable. It's really
kind of a dream come true. I'm working on the new generation of machines that can save
people's lives, like my life was saved. We all work together in order to help create
these new and innovative ideas. 25 years ago, ECMO saved my life. Now, thanks in part to
your support, I'm here to work on the next bold idea. This is my world. My world needs
victors. Be a victor for Michigan.