Abigail Schipper is an MD candidate at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before attending the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, where she completed an MPhil in Engineering. Her research has focused on technologies that support community healthcare workers and first responders caring for emergently ill patients in low- and middle-income countries. 

As an undergraduate, Abigail co-founded LifeSaveHer, an initiative aimed at reducing gender disparities in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest care that received the grand prize in the 2023 IDEAS Social Innovation Competition. She also conducted research in Giovanni Traverso’s lab at MIT, where she helped design a drug-delivery implant for settings with limited surgical capacity. Alongside her academic work, Abigail has spent more than half a decade working as an Emergency Medical Technician. She served on an emergency ambulance with the MIT Emergency Medical Service and later worked in neonatal and pediatric critical care transport with the Boston Children’s Hospital Critical Care Transport Team. In the future, she hopes to improve prehospital systems and advance health equity through research and innovation. 

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Abigail remains committed to her Pacific Northwest roots. In her free time, she enjoys looking at trees and trying—and usually failing—to fix her bicycle.