Professional Role

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Biography

Philip Niles is pursuing his M.D. and M.B.A. degrees at Case Western in Cleveland. He completed his undergraduate magna cum laude in three years, and majored in economics. Philip has pursued several independent projects including: evaluating the economic value of renovating public square for the Cleveland City Planning Commission, starting an HIV/AIDS testing center in Kenya, working as a supply chain management consultant for ORBIS International, an organization committed to preventing avoidable blindness through the use of its airplane-turned-eye hospital, in the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam. Philip has been named a Cleveland Clinic Healthcare Management Scholar, and consulted for the Cleveland Clinic Quality and Patient Safety Institute on the costs of postoperative complications. Philip has performed research at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, studying the cost-effectiveness of diagnostic imaging in glaucoma patients, and he delivered a podium presentation at the 2011 meeting of the Association for Research and Vision in Ophthalmology (ARVO). He will begin his ophthalmology residency in July, 2013 at the University of Iowa. Philip is part of the TED2009 Fellow class.

Fun facts

Favorite meal:
Chicken Wings - invented in my hometown of Buffalo, NY

A funny story about me:
I do not recommend staying ten paces behind me. A year after I volunteered on ambulances in Haifa, Israel, the city was bombed in the Second Lebanon war. Just after I helped start an HIV diagnosing center in Kenya, the country sank into brutal political warfare. Two months after I worked with ORBIS International on their Flying Eye Hospital in Myanmar, a disastrous flood swept the Irrawaddy River Basin. I have even been on a Caribbean cruise that ended when the boat was evacuated for a hurricane warning. Later that year, the Carnival Ecstasy actually caught on fire and had to be pulled back to shore by the U.S. Coast Guard. I don't know if I'm lucky or cursed, but at least I can always count on my timing.