Abdus Sabour Shaik

Hailing from Motor City and raised in Katy, Texas, Sabour Shaik earned a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.

As a founding member of POLAIR, Shaik developed a modular face mask to address global PPE hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. In collaboration with Honeywell, his team produced 30 high-fidelity prototypes in six weeks. POLAIR earned runner-up in the XPrize Next-Gen Mask Challenge, received $250K in funding, was featured on CNBC’s Mad Money, and helped launch the CATALYST fund to support student-led health innovation at Johns Hopkins for the next two decades.

Shaik also co-developed an anesthesia delivery device to prevent syringe-swapping errors in the OR. Piloted across 30 operating rooms, its limited adoption underscored the value of deep clinical immersion—central to Shaik’s identity as a physicianeer—in uncovering and addressing real-world healthcare challenges.

In his senior year, he served as the primary inventor of ContiPants, a wearable incontinence device for patients recovering from radical prostatectomy. Featured at the 2024 Johns Hopkins Design Day, the project received the Linda Trinh Memorial Award for exemplifying a commitment to improving the human condition. The work led to two manuscripts and is currently advancing through the licensing process.

During his gap year at Baylor College of Medicine, Shaik worked in urologic oncology, motivated by a family history of cancer. He collected bladder cancer specimens in the OR, consented patients across clinical settings, and supported multi-institutional studies with MD Anderson (CPRIT) and the NCI (CPTAC). He also managed outcomes databases used across five institutions.

Outside of medicine, Shaik enjoys hiking—including a full ascent from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point—visiting family in California, playing pickup basketball, and relaxing with his cat, Zoya.