Helping to Protect our Front Line
Since leaving Ivanhoe Grammar School graduate Michael Zoran Mutavdzija has done many exciting things, not only has he forged a career in medicine, currently working as a resident at Western Health, but he also helped set-up an online education platform for medical students.
In early 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic was at the forefront of all health workers minds, as was the urgent need to provide personal protective equipment (PPE). As such, Protect Our Frontline was established to provide much-needed 3D printed face-shields to as many hospital staff members as possible, such as doctors, nurses, medical students, cleaners and chefs across Victoria.
We are excited to announce that the School is supporting this vital cause. After being contacted by Dr Michael Zoran Mutavdzija and hearing all about the work that he was doing to provide hospital workers in Victoria with face-shields the School immediately agreed to help.
‘As a school, we are incredibly thrilled to be able to support the pioneering work of Dr Michael Zoran Mutavdzija from the Class of 2011 and the team at Protect Our Front Line. Our 3D Printing lab is busy printing much-needed face-shields to protect the health and wellbeing of our front line workers, with the School committing to print 800 shields over the next coming weeks,’ said Principal Gerard Foley.
On receiving the face-shield designs, Director of ICT & eLearning Steve Brophy and his team got to work immediately and have enthusiastically begun the process of printing these essential protective face-shields.
‘We begin our 3D fabrication journey with the desire to move beyond the flashiness of the technology. Empathetic design, developing problem finders and solvers and upskilling our students to enhance their own innate creative instincts have long been the driving force of our programs so when the opportunity came along to support the inspirational work of Dr Michael Zoran Mutavdzija, we jumped at it. Futurist Kevin Kelly famously said that ‘technology is humanity’s accelerant’ and in the world that we live in at the moment, this is a perfect example of acceleration in the right direction,’ said Director of ICT & eLearning Steve Brophy.
As we all know it’s critical to maintain the supply of PPE in the current climate and we encourage anyone in the community with a 3D printer to contact the team at Protect Our Frontline to help them to print more face-shields. https://protectourfrontline.org/
We recently caught up with Dr Michael Zoran Mutavdzija and he had these kind words to say. ‘We will always be grateful to those in the community who continue to contact us and pledge their printers and time to the creation of face-shields. You deserve all the praise for what we have been able to accomplish. Thank you to Ivanhoe Grammar School for believing in our cause and supported us with an amazing contribution of printers and materials. Without your efforts many of our frontline workers would not have access to this product. From Dr Ivy Fan, Dr Tony Truong, Julian Visser and myself, thank you.’
