Aime Mafuta has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with a Biomedical concentration from Michigan State University. He is a sickle cell carrier and has always been intrigued and eager to find ways to help ease the pain that his sister goes through as she has sickle cell disease. Aime has witnessed the long, punishing journey his sister and countless other SCD patients face throughout their lives: lives filled with frequent sudden pain, recurring emergency room visits, long hospital stays with multiple blood transfusions and intravenous therapy, physical limitations due to low blood count and oxygen level, inability to maintain a stable job due to their crises, and ever-increasing tolerance to strong opioid drugs like morphine, Dilaudid, and fentanyl, which become less effective at reducing their pain.

Aime has conducted research on the treatment of SCD. He collaborated with Tej I Sutariya to create projectZero with a mission to ease the burden that SCD patients carry.

• Functional product, tested

• Research done (scientific/engineering aspect, marketing/demographics)

• Financial forecasts created

• Our team — founding group of two, actively hiring talent

• After many months of extensive R&D, trials, and design changes, we are now at our final design which went into mass production at the beginning of 2022. We produced 2,500 devices in January 2022 (our trial month), and aim to ramp up production to 10,000 devices by August.