Hi! I'm Kath, from Peru. I'm a biomedical engineer, but that word has never quite covered what I do. I was born in Huancayo, a city in the Andes, where I saw very early how unequal access to healthcare can be. That gap is why I became an engineer. What I didn't expect was that engineering alone would not be enough. Since my first year at university I was also taking courses in 3D design, digital fabrication and graphic design, quietly, on my own, as if it were a parallel life. It took me a while to stop treating them as two separate things.

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During the pandemic I joined the MASI project, which brought nearly 150 mechanical ventilators to Peruvian hospitals, including Chachapoyas at 2,400 metres above sea level. Standing in that corridor I understood that a device only matters once it reaches the person who needs it, and that reaching them is a design problem as much as a technical one. Later I worked at Siemens Healthineers and in medical technology, installing diagnostic equipment across public and private hospitals. Along the way I prototyped a smart walker for older adults, a home cardiac auscultation device, and GABBY, a voice assistant for elderly independence that won first place at the IFMBE Summer School hackathon in Colombia. I also run ""Diario de una biomédica"", where I explain health technology through illustration and 3D design, because a technology that cannot be explained cannot be cared for.

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I'm coming to Response_Able Futures because I've been standing between engineering and design for years without a name for it, and I want to build that space properly, with people who are doing the same from the other side.