Adam Rao, MD/PhD student in Bioengineering, won the $50,000 Grand Prize at the 4th Surgical Innovations Shark Tank competition.

Rao, member of the Roy Lab in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, won with Tabla, a low-cost portable acoustic device for pneumonia detection.

It was a rare sweep for Rao, who also won the People’s Choice Award. “I have been inspired by Bell Labs and their work revolutionizing communication as we know it,” Rao said. “I am deeply grateful to have the privilege to work at UCSF and Berkeley, with colleagues in both engineering and medicine much more skilled than I,” he added.

Shuvo Roy, PhD said, “Adam worked so hard to advance this work from a concept to a functional prototype for clinical trials. I’m very proud of him.”