When Anand Ramamurthi first took biology in high school, he was immediately hooked. “I was fascinated with the human body,” he says. “How did all these organs work? What happened to them in disease? What goes wrong? These questions started me on my path to developing solutions for these problems.”
It was a path Ramamurthi initially thought would take him to medical school, but instead, morphed into an interest in chemical engineering that eventually brought him from India to the U.S.
In this episode, Ramamurthi talks about discovering bioengineering as a PhD student, and realizing the role engineers can play in treating disease and improving health care outcomes for patients. And, as the new chair of the bioengineering department, he talks about the exciting initiatives to come, and why he thinks bioengineers are uniquely positioned to solve problems like those brought on by a global pandemic.