Assistant Professor Ramanujam named to prestigious
top-100 list
ssistant Professor Nimmi
Ramanujam is one of the world’s 100 Top Young Innovators according
to Technology Review, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Magazine of Innovation. The magazine
honors 100 young researchers each year whose innovative work in business
and technology has a profound impact on the world. Nominees are recognized
for their contribution in transforming the nature of technology in industries
such as biotechnology, computing, energy, medicine, manufacturing, nano-technology,
telecommunications and transportation.
“We are very excited for Nimmi,”
says Professor and Chair Rob
Radwin. “This recognition is well-deserved, and is testimony
to the high caliber of innovators we have been able to attract to Biomedical
Engineering at UW-Madison.”
Ramanujam has developed a device that can help
guide a biopsy needle to just the right spot. An optical fiber threaded
through the needle shines light of different wavelengths on cells at
the needle’s tip; molecules in cancer cells respond by fluorescing
in characteristic ways, and sensors register the fluorescence.
Ramanujam and her colleagues are already testing
the technology in patients undergoing breast cancer surgery and plan
to test it in patients undergoing breast biopsy within the next year.
A cervical-cancer detector she began developing as a graduate student
uses a similar approach; it is now in large-scale human trials.
She is also harnessing light to non-invasively
monitor how well oxygen is getting to fetuses, an important-and currently
non-measurable-indicator of when emergency cesarean sections are needed.
With Ramanujam’s help, those babies will
be born into a world where medical questions get better answers.
