If one door is closed, knock on another and keep knocking. Liliana Romo spoke these words to her son Luis since he was young. As the two prepared to leave Colombia in 1993, she repeated them.

She asked her son, 4 years old at the time, if he was nervous.Smiling, Romo looked up and replied, ‘I think we’ll be all right, Mommy. Don’t worry.’

With no set plan, they walked through Alfonso Bonilla Aragn International Airport and flew to their new lives in the United States.

‘She said she wanted the best for me and would do anything to provide that,’ said Romo, a biomedical engineering graduate student. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

A believer in taking a leap of faith, Romo is calculating but never hesitant. He’s the founder and CEO of start-up Helios Innovative Technologies Inc., which he dreamed up in a class called ‘What’s the Big Idea’ as an undergraduate at Syracuse University. The company aims to create innovative medical products that help minimize risk of hospital-associated infections.

The biomedical engineering field offers infinite possibilities to benefit health care, some innovative products like prosthetics and CAT scan machines, Romo said. Through Helios, Romo and his business partner, Tagbo Niepa, a doctorate student in chemical engineering, are working to perfect S1, a sterilization device that latches onto doors and releases a UVC light that destroys 99 percent of bacteria on the handles.The pair is collaborating with global health leaders and the Food and Drug Administration to patent the device.

In 2011, Helios was nominated to the top 50 most promising out of 1,600 start-ups nationwide by Startup Open during Global Entrepreneurship Week. He was invited to the Northeast Business Leaders Forum in Washington, D.C., and visited the White House, where he met the U.S. treasurer and top CEOs in the country.

At age 7, Romo remembers spending summer days with his younger brother, Christian, at their grandparents’ home on Long Island. Their grandfather tested the boys’ skills, watching as they took apart household appliances and pieced them back together. At home, Romo helped around the house, fixing the sprinkler system and constructing the front steps to his house with his family.

In high school, Romo took a college-level biology course through Syracuse University Project Advance, his point of contact with SU. When the university sent a letter, Romo opened it in front of his mother.

‘He kept saying, ‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it – I’m going to Syracuse, Mom,” Liliana Romo said, remembering how the two collapsed on the sofa in tears. ‘When this dream came through, it was incredible. Just incredible.’

In his senior year, Romo worked with doctors at Upstate University Hospital as part of his capstone project. Doctors asked Romo and his classmates to find a way to record alveolar sacks inside the lungs without touching them, to prevent damage. They brainstormed and crafted a pen-sized microscope throughout the semester. At the end, the doctors tested the device on a pig in a research operating room.

‘It was so surreal,’ Romo remembered. ‘I fell in love with medicine right then.’

His desire to help those in need has been ingrained in him since childhood. When he lived in Colombia, Romo and his mother traveled two hours from their town of La Alameda every year to Aguablanca.Its residents lived near a polluted river and in houses constructed from cardboard and tarp. Romo would give away his old clothes and toys.

‘I always told him you don’t need much in life to live,’ Liliana Romo said.

Nearing the end of his undergraduate days, Romo decided to continue learning and growing Helios as a graduate student. After a promising fellowship fell through, Romo felt directionless and lost for the first time.

‘I didn’t have a answer for myself. I felt like a failure,’ he said. ‘I had no plan.’

He sought the advice of Don Sawyer, director of the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation. With Sawyer’s help, Romo received a scholarship through LSTAMP. As a graduate assistant, he now works at Bowne Hall for 20 hours a week and mentors students. He was also chosen as one of 13 students on the SU Student Philanthropy Council.

In April, Helios won the $50,000 prize through the 2011 New York State Business Plan competition.Romo plans to take the company even further, with three or four projects currently in the works.

This year, Helios entered Emerging Talk again. Though the company didn’t advance to the next round, Romo isn’t disheartened. As always, if there’s a problem, there are ways to fix it.

Her son has always carried that mindset, said Liliana Romo, who recalled one instance when Romo was 11. She discovered the wooden side door to their house had been damaged by rain. Together, they brought down the door to install another. Hours later, mother and son gazed at their handiwork. He looked up.

‘See?’ he said, grinning. ‘I told you not to worry.’

kkim40@syr.edu

Published on April 30, 2012 at 12:00 pm