During the war, in 1942, Lolo started out as a Red Cross Nurse at Bellevue Hospital in New York, where she met her future husband, Dr. Stanley J. Sarnoff.

Lolo as a Red Cross Nurse

Already at that time, Dr. Sarnoff's main interest was research, which gave Lolo a chance to be his first assistant in 1943, several years before she entered the field of science.

After their marriage in Boston in 1948, Lolo had the chance to seriously get engaged in the field of science as Dr. Sarnoff's assistant at the Harvard School of Public Health, where Stanley was Assistant Professor. Very kindly, the Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health bestowed the title of Research Assistant on Lolo, which gave her her first real standing as a scientist and made it possible for her to assist in many research projects, including the final development of the Electro-Phrenic Respirator, a new device for artificial respiration which would be used to treat Bulbar polio, a special type of polio where artificial respiration could not be established by the iron lung.

Description of the Electrophrenic Respirator

The Electro-Phrenic Respirator was capable to take over breathing by stimulating the phrenic nerve at any desired rate and depth.

This was a whole new way to approach curing this dreaded disease which usually ended in death, as with Helen Hayes's daughter. At the same time, Lolo's daughter, Daniela, was stricken, but saved by this method. This medical breakthrough was mentioned nationally in newspapers from New England to California, as a great new life savor of Bulbar polio. Headlines proclaimed, "The Device Cheats Death."

Photo of the Electrophrenic Respirator on Exhibit in Brussels.

In 1950 Lolo lectured at the 6th International Pediatric Congress in Zurich, Switzerland.

Photos of the Front and Back of Mrs. Sarnoff's Kongresskarte

After Stanley's appointment to the National Institutes of Health in 1954, Lolo continued her scientific research by much persuasion of the then-director of the Heart Institute, Dr. Robert Berliner, and was introduced by Stanley to the field of circulation, far removed from the field of artificial respiration. Lolo had the chance to be a co-author of some of Dr. Sarnoff's most famous papers on pulmonary edema.

In 1956 Lolo lectured at the 20th Congrès International de Physiologie in Brussels, Belgium.

Lolo's Lecture ID Card

To her great sadness, but out of loyalty to her husband, she resigned from NIH in 1959 to become the first President of his future successful company, Survival Technology, Inc., then called Rodana Research Corporation, named after their children.

Her proudest scientific moment was to be included in the American Men of Science in 1962, which at the time hardly included any females and certainly none without serious scientific studies.