Student Spotlight: Christian Morrell

Breathe BioMedical is dedicated to hiring students to join our team and contribute in both full and part-time positions. These talented interns gain valuable work experience at Breathe BioMedical, while benefiting our team with their eagerness to work, learn and build our pipeline for future hires.??

Christian Morrell is a recent graduate from the University of New Brunswick. He has a degree in electrical engineering with a specialization in biomedical engineering. This summer, he was accepted into a master’s program at the University of New Brunswick, where he will work under the supervision of Dr. Erik Scheme at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering in Fredericton.??

Christian has joined Breathe BioMedical as a Machine Learning Intern.??

He was introduced to the company through his professor, Dr. Scheme. “I took a course with Dr. Scheme back in the fall, and he had recommended Breathe BioMedical, saying it was a good company to apply the principles of machine learning,” said Christian. With a goal of getting work experience in biomedical engineering, Breathe BioMedical was a perfect fit.??

As our Machine Learning Intern, Christian works with the physics team at Breathe BioMedical and the machine learning team at the University of New Brunswick. Currently, all of Breathe BioMedical’s machine learning algorithms, tools, studies, and results have been in MATLAB – a type of programming language. “The main thing I have been working on is transitioning everything on MATLAB to the language, Python,” he said. Python is more widely used for machine learning, in addition to being a more user-friendly, readable, and portable language. Moving the machine learning tools over to Python allows for the physics team to experiment with the tools. Once Christian finishes porting the tools from MATLAB to Python, his goal is to incorporate more machine learning features that are interpretable, so that anyone looking at the data can understand what the results show.??

This work allows for results to be much better interpreted in the context of a breathprint spectrum, because the entire breathprint spectrum is transformed instead of a single data point being transformed at a time. The goal is to produce results that can be more easily understood/visualized and connect the machine learning classifications to the VOCs found in breath, which is an area that Breathe Biomedical has worked with extensively.??

He has also been working on the machine learning methods sections of our COVID-19 pneumonia study. The abstract of this study was published in May, with results showing that our technology can detect COVID-19 in patients with pneumonia with an accuracy of 81.9%.??

“I have enjoyed my time at Breathe BioMedical, and have made lots of great connections in the industry,” said Christian. “I am grateful to have a biomedical job, and working at this start-up has allowed me to wear a lot of hats and learn a lot.”?

Christian is from Woodstock, N.B. He enjoys playing sports – such as hockey, volleyball, and soccer – as well as playing music, and spending time with friends and family. This summer, he has worked remotely from France and has explored the southwest region, moving to a new place each month. Something he has taken up over the summer is surfing.??

We are grateful to have Christian on our team, and we look forward to seeing the rest of his work term accomplishments!??

If you are interested in intern opportunities at Breathe BioMedical, please email [email protected].??