A University of Iowa student and recent alumnus are helping to improve communication among organ donor networks through their new startup company and app, called Organizer.

Eric Pahl, a UI engineering graduate and current Ph.D. student studying health informatics, and Dalton Shaull, a recent human physiology graduate, recently won $25,000 from the Iowa Economic Development Authority to advance their three initial test sites. They are looking to raise additional funds to complete the buildout of the app and acquire eight additional test sites in which they hope to run simulations to prove its efficacy so they can begin making a positive impact on the entire transplant community. 

Pahl and Shaull created Organizer to help reduce communication issues that lead to donor-organ loss. Shaull was originally motivated to start this project after watching his friend fight off a disease as he waited for a transplant.

"It was after four years of watching him struggle, his disease getting worse and worse, that I desperately searched for a way to get him his transplant and save his life," Shaull says.

Organizer has also won $6,000 from the UI College of Engineering as winner of its 2015–16 Hubert E. Storer Engineering Student Entrepreneurial Start-up Award.