Did You Know She Is the Inventor of Lasik Eye Surgery? Meet This Extraordinary Woman!

If you are considering Lasik Eye Surgery, you can thank this woman who invented the procedure in 2000. She holds four of the patents on the procedure so you will be assisting her in her philanthropic work and helping her Alma Mata, Howard University through her endowment if you do get the procedure.

Dr. Patricia Era Bath (born November 4, 1942, Harlem, New York) is an2 American ophthalmologist, inventor and academic. She has broken ground for women and African Americans in a number of areas. Prior to Bath, no woman had served on the staff of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, headed a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology or been elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center (an honor bestowed on her after her retirement).

Patricicia BathBefore Bath, no black person had served as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University and no black woman had ever served on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath is the first African American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose.1 Her Laserphaco Probe is used to treat cataracts. The holder of four patents, she is also the founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington D.C. Born in Harlem on November 4, 1942, Bath was the daughter of Rupert and Gladys Bath. Her father, an immigrant from Trinidad, was a newspaper columnist, a merchant seaman and the first black man to work for the New York City Subway as a motorman.

Raised in Harlem, Bath was encouraged academically by her parents.Inspired by Albert Schweizer or his work in medicine, Bath applied for and won a National Science Foundation Scholarship while attending Charles Evans Hughes High School; this led her to a research project at Yeshiva University and Harlem Hospital Center on cancer that piqued her interest in medicine.

In 1960, still a teenager, Bath won the “Merit Award” of Mademoiselle Magazine for her contribution to the project.]After graduating high school early, Bath received her Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from New York’s Hunter College in 1964. She relocated to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University College of Medicine, from which she received her doctoral degree in 1968. During her time at Howard, she was president of the Student National Medical Association and received fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health. Bath interned at Harlem Hospital Center, subsequently serving as a fellow at Columbia University.[4]

During this period, from 1968 to 1970, Bath became aware that the practice of eye care was uneven among racial minorities and poor populations, with much higher incidence of blindness amongst her black and poor patients. She determined that, as a physician, she would help address this issue. She persuaded her professors from Columbia to operate on blind patients at Harlem Hospital Center, which had not previously offered eye surgery, at no cost.[8] Bath pioneered the worldwide discipline of “community ophthalmology”, a volunteer-based outreach to bring necessary eye care to underserved populations. She served her residency in ophthalmology at New York University from 1970 to 1973, the first African American to do so in her field.

After completing her education, Bath served briefly as an assistant professor at Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science before becoming the first woman on faculty at the Eye Institute founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, for which she served as president. In 1983, she became the head of a residency in her field at Charles R. Drew, the first woman ever to head such a department.

Patricia BathIn 1993, she retired from UCLA, which subsequently elected her the first woman on its honorary staff. She served as a professor of Ophthalmology at Howard University’s School of Medicine and as a professor of Telemedicine and Ophthalmology at St. Georges University.1 She was among the co-founders of the King-Drew Medical Center ophthalmology training program.
Bath has lectured internationally and authored over 100 papers.

Bath holds four patents in the United States. In 1981, she conceived of the Laserphaco Probe, a medical device that improves on the use of lasers to remove cataracts, and “for ablating and removing cataract lenses”. The device was completed in 1986 after Bath conducted research on lasers in Berlin and patented in 1988 making her the first African American female doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose.

The device — which quickly and nearly painlessly dissolves the cataract with a laser, irrigates and cleans the eye and permits the easy insertion of a new lens — is used internationally to treat the disease. Bath has continued to improve the device and has successfully restored vision to people who have been unable to see for decades.

Three of Bath’s four patents relate to the Laserphaco Probe.In 2000, she was granted a patent for a method she devised for using ultrasound technology to treat cataracts.

Bath has been honored by two of her universities. Hunter College placed her in its “hall of fame” in 1988 and Howard University declared her a “Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine” in 1993.]

Source: http://urbanintellectuals.com/2016/03/31/know-inventor-laser-eye-surgery-meet-extraordinary-woman/

Dr. Herbert Smitherman

Dr. Herbert Smitherman was a pioneering executive and professional chemist at Proctor & Gamble who led the way for other African-Americans at the prestigious company in the 1960s. He was the first black person with a doctorate hired at Proctor & Gamble.

With a Ph.D in physical organic chemistry, Dr. Smitherman developed a number of incredibly popular patents, including Crest toothpaste, Safeguard soap, Bounce fabric softeners, Biz, Folgers Coffee and Crush soda, to name a few. Not only are they still on the shelves, but many of them are on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center in the featured exhibit, “America I AM: The African-American Imprint.”

Nicknamed the “Jackie Robinson of Proctor & Gamble,” Dr. Smitherman spent 29 years there before turning in his labcoat to work as a professor at Wilberforce University. But after serving at the historically black college, Smitherman turned his attention to starting a high school called the Western Hills Design Technology School to help black students perform better in math and science.

A child of the south, Dr. Smitherman’s family lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where his father served as a reverend. A young Smitherman would see his father’s church burn down twice during their push for voting registration and voting rights.

He died this year on Oct. 9.

Dr. Smitherman’s legacy was left in his association with HBCUs, specifically his alma mater, Tuskegee Institute, where he met his wife of 51 years; Howard University, where he got his PH.D, and Wilberforce University, where he enlightened many students on his world of historical innovation.

Source: http://blackhistorymonth.blackamericaweb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=562%3Adr-herbert-smitherman&catid=112%3Ageneral&Itemid=292

A Guy Who Used To Be Homeless Shows Us Exactly What Determination Looks Like

This is an amazing guy who is going to do great things in life. I'm awed by him and the woman who believed in him.

Source: http://www.upworthy.com/a-guy-who-used-to-be-homeless-shows-us-exactly-what-determination-looks-like-5

Black Entrepreneur Pencils Herself Into Silicon Valley

I’m Tiffani Ashley Bell and I founded Pencil You In as a way to allow hairstylists and makeup artists to accept appointments online and by extension, grow their clientele.

I’ve been programming since I was a kid, but at some point, I realized it was more important to use my technical ability to solve real problems. This all came to a head back in 2008 during my senior year as a computer science major at Howard University.

As graduation loomed closer, I occasionally eschewed track pants and a headscarf thanks to job interviews, presentations, etc. My hairstylist and I played these lovely games of phone tag as I forgot to call him or I’d call him and his appointment book wasn’t at hand. When we finally were in sync, I sometimes ended up with appointments at awkward times (7am, once), if one at all. One could say that I needed to just make my appointments at the end of visits, but this asked too much of the schedule of someone weeks away from graduation. Pencil You In was then conceived as my solution to my hair appointment scheduling woes.

Pencil You In was one project out of several I was working on at one time, but it became evident that it should get 100% of my attention. With that realization, however, came a flood of questions: should I raise money? How does the customer in Tampa’s feedback fit into the vision? Whose advice should I take with a grain of salt and for whose should I go back for seconds?

Eager for answers, I quit my job at the beginning of June to come to the Bay area two weeks later thanks to the NewME Accelerator. After being here for just a month, many of my questions have gotten awesome answers. For others, the answers are revealing themselves as the countdown to Demo Day winds down. I couldn’t have expected more out of being here.

The NewME Accelerator is shifting my entire thought process on running a company (and by extension, living). I’ve met one brilliant person after another (the likes of Navarrow Wright, Jay Jamison, etc.), talked to investors I may have never had the chance to speak to otherwise (Mitch Kapor, for example), and built out my company in an environment where it’s clear everybody appreciates ambition and wants to see success.

Check out Pencil You In to book your look online 24/7/365.

Source: http://newsone.com/nation/technology-nation/tiffanibell/tiffani-bell-pencil-you-in/

Chrysler 300: Designed by Howard University Graduate

Ralph Gilles: How To Create Cool Cars

“So, how does it feel to be a suit?”

And with that question, Ralph Gilles, the man who is undoubtedly the reigning rock star of U.S. car designers, a man who is lauded far and wide for his design of the breakthrough Chrysler 300, stares back with incredulity, arrayed as he is in something of a designer’s uniform, the obligatory black (sports jacket) on black (shirt) on black (trousers) on black (shoes), with nary a tie in sight. “A what?!?”


The man behind the design of the Chrysler 300 has been raised to the level of suitdom, but his approach remains completely authentic, which is particularly important given that his purview is now in the extremely important Jeep and truck categories.
“Well, you know, a suit—an executive—after all, you’re the vp of Jeep/Truck and Component Design for Chrysler Group. An exec. A suit.”

“!”

This isn’t going so well. Gilles is not in the least bit happy with this characterization. He’s been with the company since ’92 when he joined the Design Office as a designer, the year he received a BSc from the Center [now “College”] of Creative Studies in Detroit. In the following years he has been a manager (’98), senior manager (’99), and then director (’01) in the Design Office. In ’05 he was named director of the Truck Exterior/Interior Design Studio before quickly getting his present position. A meteoric rise for a man who turned 36 in January.

“A suit!”

Well, I guess that characterization is belied by not only what he’s actually wearing, but also what appears to be a Little Tikes TotSports Golf Set* he has in his office in the Chrysler Technology Center. He’d been told that people at his level are expected to play golf—well, suits do, anyway—so . . .

One of the things that Gilles emphasizes about the way work is done at Chrysler is that it is not the individual, but the team that matters. The entire group of people who are responsible for transforming ideas into sheetmetal. Simply stated: “One designer by himself with the greatest sketch in the world won’t mean a hill of beans if he doesn’t have the engineering people and the management behind him.”

He cites, for example, the experience that he’d had with the 300. He explains that about two years prior to his receiving the brief to develop the vehicle’s design, people were working on the vehicle, defining what the vehicle was to be. Fundamentally: “A V8-powered, rear-drive, five-passenger luxury sedan.” About which Gilles says, “In that lies the design of the 300. The idea of the car was already there.” Of course, that’s sort of like a sculptor who is presented with a block of marble and can “see” the finished work within.

But he points out that there are some key design drivers defined by those words: because it was to be a V8-powered vehicle, there needed to be a hood of certain dimensions. Because it was to be a five-passenger car, there needed to be a certain proportional area. Because it was to be a luxury vehicle, it required a classic silhouette.

But then, of course, Gilles needed the support of the executives in the organization to approve his approach as well as the support of the engineers who would be tasked with transforming the design into an automobile. (He observes that so far as he is concerned, the actual manufactured 300 is better looking than the 2003 concept car.)

This, of course, leads to a question of, simply, How? How do you get people to go beyond the ordinary, the expected? After all, there are cars that can be defined as “V8-powered, rear-drive, five-passenger luxury sedans” that don’t hold a candle to the 300. So how does Chrysler get the next one (or in the case of Gilles’ new position, the next Dodge Ram)? His simple answer: “Empower them. Support them.” Which are key things that he must do, now that he is in a position where he is no longer on the screen designing. He amplifies: “A beautiful part about Chrysler is the culture. Since this company’s been around it’s been a bit of an underdog culture, a scrappy, risk-taking culture.”

There is also an awareness of what it takes to be competitive in a market where there are a seemingly never-ending flow of new products to market: “Everyone does a decent product. So why would someone buy a Chrysler versus any other? It has to have an element of passion. I think the passion comes through loud and clear on a lot of our products because of the energy that starts at the design table—and obviously the engineers understood it because they did the layout. The end user can feel it.” All for one and one for all.


*It actually isn’t a bona fide Little Tikes set, but it is far closer to one, say, than anything that would come, say, from Callaway.
But there is another element to Chrysler’s history and its culture, which is a certain frugality. In other words, people within the company understand that they must be cost sensitive when they do their jobs. So how does that affect design? It could to a considerable extent, Gilles admits, but then goes on to explain that making their designs both possible and practical are computer-aided tools such as simulation. As he puts it, “When you have to invest cubic dollars into a tool, you might play it safe unless you have the data that says it’s OK to take this risk.” As an example of making something possible, he references the comparatively small windows on the 300, which he admits “was a tough one.” The question was whether they’d be found acceptable by the market. “We were able to show our management that the aesthetic pulls the car away from the crowd and makes the vehicle distinctive, sporty, and more interesting.” The simulation allowed the executives to see the way the car would look before it was actually built with some of the aforementioned stacks of cash.

This leads to another example, one that goes to the point of practicality or produce-ability. “In the old days we might have said that we’d calm a fender form down, take a radius out to simplify the design.” They’d be inclined to be more cautious because the only way they’d really understand what they had would be to create a stamping die and produce the actual part. But now they’re able to make the assessment while the design is in virtual form.

Providing simulation with the level of props that Gilles’ own design chops have been lauded with, he remarks, “Cars are approaching almost a conceptual look because of this technology.”

A suit? Maybe in position. Certainly not in practice.


Source: http://www.autofieldguide.com/columns/0706profile02.html