David Kelso

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Center for Innovative Global Health Technologies Director

David M. Kelso is Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and is Director of the Center for Innovative Global Health Technologies (CIGHT). Prof. Kelso recently introduced medical device design projects for the developing world into the senior biomedical engineering design course (at named school), and he has started an engineering design study abroad program in South Africa.

Before joining Northwestern, Prof. Kelso was Chief Scientist at Baxter Healthcare’s Pandex Division from 1986 to 1992 and directed the team of engineers and scientists which developed the first high-throughput, multi-channel blood screening system which detected HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases. In 1981, Prof. Kelso founded Pandex Laboratories, a company that developed, manufactured and sold analytical systems for biomedical research; and he served as its president until 1986. Prior to his biotech venture, Prof. Kelso was a cofounder of an entrepreneurial group at Abbott Laboratories which developed the TDx system and created the company’s therapeutic drug monitoring business. At Abbott, he also developed the first microprocessor-controlled enzyme immunoassay analyzer, Quantum, which led the industry away from radioactive assays which had been the standard for decades.

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