Dr. Saeed Ashrafinia, PhD in Electrical Engineering | Collaboration Manager at Siemens Healthineers

In this episode, we discuss how a desire to make a broad impact influenced Saeed’s decision to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Johns Hopkins and his post-degree career ambitions, his advice for exploring your options and finding the right graduate program and supervisor to support your goals and values, and his take on the benefits of being interdisciplinary and how he utilizes this asset in his current role as a Collaboration Manager at Siemens Healthineers.

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

To connect with Saeed and to learn more about his story, visit his page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Lois Dankwa

Hi. I'm co-host Lois Dankwa and this is the 100 Alumni Voices Podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Saeed Ashrafinia, PhD in electrical engineering and current collaboration manager at Siemens, Healthineers. Hi Saeed.

Saeed Ashrafinia

Hello Lois. Thank you very much for having me.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah. How are you today?

Saeed Ashrafinia

I'm doing well. Thank you.

Lois Dankwa

Well, I'm excited to dive in and I think I want to first start by hearing about why you wanted to pursue a PhD in electrical engineering and also just more about your graduate work at Hopkins in general.

Saeed Ashrafinia

Thank you very much. So before joining my PhD program, I had a background in electrical engineering both in my Bachelor and Masters and for my PhD I was looking to expand my impact, expand the impact of my future career to the areas that are of more value to to everyone, and especially for that I was looking into healthcare and pursuing a PhD at Johns Hopkins University in the under the subject that I was in, which was nuclear medicine was a perfect place for me, with my background in electrical engineering, having impact in an area of healthcare that can hopefully provide value to thousands and thousands of individuals.

Lois Dankwa

It's funny because a lot of people pursue a PhD with great intention, but it sounds like you pursued a PhD with intention in a way that was a little unorthodox, where you pursued a degree in engineering knowing you wanted to make a healthcare impact. And I I'm curious more about kind of what drove you to do that and how you went about doing that, knowing that engineering and healthcare seem like opposite things?

Saeed Ashrafinia

That's a great question. So first of all, I had that vision even before my PhD. When I was in high school, I was having that vision that I was looking for a career with that level of impact. I wasn't only looking for, you know, something that I can just go outside and make money on it. Or even when I was doing studying electrical engineering just to limit my scope related to electrical engineering work not because I'm not saying that these are, you know, anything of less value or anything. But because I was provide more impact to more people. For that reason, I started a cross continent trip at the end of my Master’s degree. I provided this photo as one of the two photos that I was asked for, for a Hopkins alumni 100 and it's a map of the trip that I took to go to different universities across US and Canada to find these such programs. So back then I I was studying Masters of electrical engineering at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. So, I started my trip from Vancouver, went down to LA, then from there to Davis, one of my friends, I went to UC Davis. I went to Berkeley, Stanford, then from there I went to LA, then from there, UC San Diego. I was there then from there I took a plane to Atlanta. I went to Georgia Tech from there, another plane to Baltimore. I came to Johns Hopkins University was there for a few days. Then I drove to Philadelphia. I went to UPenn. From there to New York City, to Columbia University, and from there to Toronto. And after seeing in rest of Toronto, I flew back all the way to Vancouver. So, the whole cross country, the cross-continent trip and and it was, it was such a unique experience after many, many years. I still remember that trip with, with, with lots of memories and lots of great things that I learned. Of course, the biggest part of it was meeting a lot of faculty members talking to them, discussing potential opportunities, and this had a great like tremendous value for me regarding identifying what I want to do next.

Lois Dankwa

That's such a cool approach and way to kind of pick which doctorate program would make most sense for you. 

Saeed Ashrafinia

Thank you.

Lois Dankwa

I'm curious how that approach of like picking and choosing and really exploring the different options carried into how you thought about what type of role you would want after your doctorate program. Like, did you do similar things like where you would explore all kinds of different companies?

Saeed Ashrafinia

That's a a good question. So first I'm gonna answer to your second question and that is the time that we have during our academic programs, especially Master and PhD, this is a this gives us a tremendous opportunity to be liberated from, you know, some of the grown-up world bounds such as you know a a job or, you know, perhaps more dedication with family and all that and we can really use these few years to go and explore more and more areas, the more the better. This opportunity may never come back in our lives. I'm saying that after, you know, being away from academia for a couple of years or several years. Being in academia, that's the only place that's one of the only places that you can really go and explore areas, areas that not only you know, limited to your field, but you can even consider you know the areas that are somehow related. Consider interdisciplinary areas and all that. But being in academia that those few years this is this is just such a great opportunity and then going to answering to your first question, yeah, I tried to kind of evaluate my options and back then I mean this started really as a fun idea, but I really found found it impactful and and and greatly helped my decision with my decision making. Because I was there in this university, I mean I wanna actually get into the this this is an important point too. So, when as a student we apply for other programs we start, you know, emailing other universities and e-mail sending emails to or not even sending emails. We just go on the website and start applying, you know, and we never know with which faculty we're gonna end up. But going to these universities in person, meeting the person, the faculty who I'm gonna work with closely for, let's say four or five six years, seeing the lab environment and all that this, I have many friends that that they have they are pursuing or they have been pursuing their program and they're even they're doing that in a reputed university but they're really in trouble with the relationship they have with their with their supervisor. If they had the opportunity to go and you know search what they're gonna get theirselves into, probably they had a better and more pleasant experience during their graduate program.

Lois Dankwa

That's such a good point. Kind of knowing if the environment is a good space for you and pinpointing how someone’s work style might work with your own work style. And I'm curious. So, you mentioned it, it sounds like you have a very interdisciplinary career. And I'm curious how an understanding of different work styles has both informed how you've gone through your career, but also how you've existed professionally and talked to different groups of people?

Saeed Ashrafinia

So first of all, I'm going to start by saying that we are in a very great era that you can do great, but by being an expert in one single field and really know it very well, but you can also be great and and super useful if you enter an interdisciplinary field and nowadays with the boundaries between different areas of, you know, science, engineering, medicine and all that becoming more, you know, faded, it's easier than ever to get into these interdisciplinary fields. They are way more opportunities and you can provide much more value either being in academic setting or in industry.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, no, that that answered my question completely.

Saeed Ashrafinia

OK.

Lois Dankwa

I'm curious then, so I'm someone that I'm a little biased. I love interdisciplinary work. I think collaboration is so important. But from your perspective, I'm curious what has been challenging about working in an interdisciplinary field from people thinking that you may not understand that basically them pigeonholing you as just an engineer or just a researcher or whatever else they see you as. What's challenging about that?

Saeed Ashrafinia

Yeah, of course it's very challenging, especially in my role as a collaboration manager that I facilitate research being in product development, in clinical validation, clinical evaluation, or clinical marketing. So, I have to be the bridge between our internal experts and scientists and external faculty members and doctors. So of course, in many of these meetings, perhaps I'm the the least informed person in the room compared to the expert the experts that are that are sitting on the both sides of the table. But there are ways to, you know, prepare. Of course, knowing the subject of the meeting, knowing the agenda, I can go and read before that to just ask to just learn a little bit more. And one more thing I wanna say, and this is perhaps exclusive to my current role, being in Johns Hopkins and pursuing the my PhD degree in electrical engineering at a lab that what was at Johns Hopkins Hospital really provided me this great background of both engineering and clinic. So, it kind of, you know, you get to that level when you you're not afraid. So of course, they're they're way more, you know, clinical and medical jargons in these meetings. But because I was, you know, I was in that environment during my PhD in my lab, was in the Department of Radiology, I was more in communication with the with the medical school faculty. So, I wasn't afraid of, you know, these settings and these dialogues and this greatly helped.

Lois Dankwa

Right. It's important to put yourself out there outside of your comfort zone.

Saeed Ashrafinia

Exactly.

Lois Dankwa

How did that, and I guess you already began to get at that, but how did that help you kind of exist comfortably and confidently in the space that you're in now? And can you also just tell us what are exciting parts and what are fun parts about what you do?

Saeed Ashrafinia

Hmm interesting so. Well, about the fun parts of what I do actually the greatest thing about what I do is that is the fact that I I I am in I the greatest part of my current role is to be connected to the greatest minds of our field across the world, and especially for my focus area in North America, so this is my like the the, the the thing that I like the most about my current role. I have frequent meetings with the, you know, with, with doctors and professors that are, you know, in great universities, great hospitals. And not just that, but also in my current role I have this unique opportunity that if I see a specific area that worth pursuing by industry I can bring it in and I can present it to our company so that they start exploring and potentially putting a product out there for it. This is something that in academia it's very hard to reach. Like mostly people are involved with publishing papers and and things like that, especially in graduate studies. But in industry is where you can, you know, really make that a feasible, a tangible product. And my current role greatly gives me this opportunity to be in communication with these great minds. And also, if there's an, if there's a good idea out there that is close to implementation, this is a very important thing, then I can get that and bring it to the company and say let's consider this as well.

Lois Dankwa

That's so cool. You're you're able to be a part of impact at the ground level, but it's also even like, even like a seedling of impact, you have access to that. That's so cool. I'm curious how you've noticed lessons from your doctorate program showing up into what you do now. Like I know that you knew you wanted to have this type of impact, but are there specific skills and things that you learned specifically in your program, whether it was advice you received or anything like that?

Saeed Ashrafinia

Two important things I'm going to add to my answer, the 1st is the the great help by my advisor, my supervisor, doctor Arman Ramim, throughout my graduate studies at Johns Hopkins. The fact that he provided me with the opportunity to go to multiple conferences a year and see the these, you know, other faculties, other professors, this was just tremendously useful. So, in conferences in when you go to a conference, it's a, it's an environment that you're gonna see not only, of course, people in academia, but also in industry. And when you go there every year, maybe a few times a year, you get to see these guys and they get to see you too. Of course, you're very junior, but you start to kind of like build this relationship. My advisor was kind enough that like the two of us, we were maybe or with other lab members when we were walking or we were we were in the conference venue, he was introducing us to, you know, to his other colleagues from other universities and it got us to a point at the at at the end of my PhD program, offers started like I was starting, I was started to receive offers without even me wanting to go there and ask for, you know, opportunities because and and these offers were coming from faculties, professors, or industry members that used to see me in the past couple of years every year, you know, coming to conferences present. So, they have a background and so if they were looking for a position for an open position that they had as a postdoc or as a faculty, that they would, you know, suggest that to me. And I was at a point in my at the end of my 4th year that I was having, I mean, I was fortunate to have to have multiple offers that I could kind of entertain and pick and choose. So, it was it was, it was really interesting. And the second part I wanna add to that is again going back to that interdisciplinary discussion that we had. So, I wanted to have a feeling of business side of things and for that reason being in collaborations team in our company was one of the best places to provide me with that. Being in collaboration you have one foot in research and in the clinical side of things and of course another one in in business and in management and execution and you have to be the to to to make this happen, to connect people from outside of the industry outside of your company to the, you know, to scientists and experts inside. So, this was just such a such a great mixture of business management, execution, engineering electrical and all that all together and I was seeing that as a kind of like a middle milestone in my long-term career growth where I where I want to be. I didn't want to just enter industry from bottom from very bottom of it as it is a programmer or whatnot. Neither I wanted to just forego all my experiences during my graduate study and start, you know, as someone who's doing solely business. So, I entered somewhere in the middle and I I I I think I made the right choice and I'm really looking forward to a future that brings more impact and I can and and where I can provide more value.

Lois Dankwa

Ah, that's exciting to hear. And it's it's so important to have a mentor that can really support your interest, whether it's them introducing you to their peers or helping support your desire to have impact in the way that you're looking to have it. So, I have two more questions for you, if that's OK. And the first, the 1st is about your advice. So, I'm curious what advice you would give to someone who's interested in having an interdisciplinary career that looks like yours?

Saeed Ashrafinia

So again, I mentioned about the importance of interdisciplinary areas and the fact that they are so much sought after these days in different settings, in academia, in corporation, in startups, everywhere. So, if you're someone that have the opportunity to find that kind of interdisciplinary or niche area and you can develop your skill sets and be on top of things on that, I mean, you're doing just great and you will, you will definitely find institutions being any of those that I said that, are they they really want you, I mean very bad.

Lois Dankwa

Well, so as my last question, I'm curious what inspires you right now?

Saeed Ashrafinia

Well, as I said before, I to answer this question, I'm gonna go back to the answer that I gave for my first question, which was the vision that I see for myself in my life to help people in a very broad setting, and I found that to be in healthcare. So, I look forward to move up in our in the corporate setting and gain more experience and this will definitely help me that in the future decisions that I make will have greater impact, not only in the business, but maybe I also consider an exit point sometime in the future, not so far that I exit a corporate world and I can start something of my own with the experience that I gained throughout these years working for a reputable and very successful company. So, I think the plan that I had for myself so far has worked great, although it has its ups and downs. For example, COVID right at the beginning of my career as a full-time employee has its own, you know, added on taxes on on on my career growth. But yeah, I mean the challenges is something that we embrace and and and we would never stop because you know of some bottleneck or something that that has happened in the middle of our work or our path.

Lois Dankwa

Well, what inspires you has now inspired me, and for that, Saeed, I want to thank you. Thank you for all of your words. Thank you for your time and also just sharing a little bit about your experiences and the moments that have gotten you to this moment today. Thank you so much.

Saeed Ashrafinia

You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me again.