As soon as Weekend MBA student Chandan Singh heard about the emerging coronavirus pandemic, he knew that he could help.
Singh, who will graduate from Booth this spring, works as an engineering project leader in GE Healthcare’s Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) division in Milwaukee. In late 2019, he learned about the virus that was quickly spreading across China and had started to impact the daily lives of his colleagues in Beijing. Singh, who has a background in biomedical engineering, watched the news closely. Something awful was likely coming, he feared.
Singh’s previous role within GE Healthcare was in the Madison, Wisconsin facility that produces ventilators. Seeing GE Healthcare products in hospitals always left him feeling gratified that something he worked on could potentially save lives. Now, ventilators have become one of the most important tools in treating critically ill COVID-19 patients. Singh spoke with his managers, volunteering to help scale up ventilator production at GE’s facility in Madison. They quickly accepted. GE announced in March that it planned to double its production of ventilators, running the line 24 hours a day. Working alongside about 100 other volunteers pitching in as part of the effort, Singh is helping increase ventilator production to meet the global demand.