Seraph Vice President Gives Featured Interview with George Mason University

This month Shane Trexler, Seraph’s Vice President of Engineering and an alumnus of George Mason University’s School of Business, gave an interview to his alma mater on his role with the company as well as Seraph’s business response to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As vice president of engineering, Trexler is tasked with managing a team of software and engineering experts, while working to champion the company’s vision of bringing novel health care solutions from the lab into the real world. Trexler and his colleagues see their work as a testament to Seraph’s mission—“to produce quality, cost-effective technologies for health care providers in order to optimize clinical decision-making in our globally integrated society.”

Watching COVID-19 rapidly spread across China and other countries, the team foresaw how shutdowns and economic unrest could compromise their mission. As a non-essential business in the state of Michigan, Seraph’s operations—based out of Wayne State University’s SSIM program—were potentially jeopardized by lockdown orders mandating the university’s receiving department and their lab shut down. As a result, the impending and all-important shipment of Seraspec® prototype’s components was at risk of non-delivery.

Acting fast and advancing with the company’s operational goals, Trexler re-routed the critical shipment to an alternate site off campus for assembly and testing. In the meantime, Greg Auner, the company’s chief science and technology officer, successfully petitioned the university to see that select lab resources were permitted to continue critical research as essential business functions in accordance with the lockdown order. They could have easily fallen behind in the dire circumstances, but instead, Seraph’s amazing progress during the pandemic became the story. “We were fortunate to have great partnerships with the university and hardware suppliers to continue builds on the spectrometer during that critical time,” said Trexler. “We have precedent for the importance of this work and we were thrilled to continue our research and development efforts.” While limiting outside interactions, Seraph’s team of experts have remained focused throughout the pandemic. Component shipments have continued as the startup moves toward commercializing Seraspec® with critical stakeholders across the country.

Read the full article on George Mason University’s website →