Being the daughter of engineers, it was only natural that Ritu Raman pursued a similar path.
During her time as a graduate student at Illinois, Raman won the campus wide Research Live! competition with her presentation “Biobots: Building BeyondBiology,” which stemmed from her research in applying biological advancement concepts to robotics.
Just after receiving her PhD. in mechanical engineering, Raman collaborated on a project geared toward teaching engineering skills in impoverished Kenyan schools.
“I remembered the children I had met when I was living in Kenya and how much enthusiasm and how many ideas they had,” Raman said in an interview withMechSE Communications. “I wanted to be able to give them the tools they needed to address challenges and solve problems.”
Raman graduated as an NSF IGERT Fellow and NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She now works at MIT as a postdoc researcher focusing on translational medicine.
Read more about Raman here.
Visit Raman’s website here.
Raman article & photograph: Mike Koon
Research competition article: Christina Oehler
Vignette written by: Taylor Tucker, May 2017