It appears that Ritu Raman was born with an ability for engineering. Raman is “a mechanical engineer through and through,” as she puts it. Today, Ritu Raman leads the Raman Lab and is an assistant teacher in MITs Department of Mechanical Engineering. Bioengineered muscle made in Ramans laboratory has the possible to develop robots that are more dynamically responsive to their environments.
Our gadgets and machines, from our phones to our vehicles, are designed for very particular purposes. And they are not cheap. Yet a dropped phone or a crashed automobile might indicate the end of it, or at the very least an expensive repair work costs. For the many part, that isnt the case with our bodies. Biological products have an exceptional capability to sense, process, and react to their environment in real-time. “As humans, if we cut our skin or if we fall, were able to heal,” states Raman. “So, I started questioning, Why arent engineers constructing with the materials that have these dynamically responsive capabilities?”.
Nowadays, Raman is focused on structure actuators (gadgets that supply motion) powered by nerve cells and skeletal muscle that can teach us more about how we move and how we navigate the world. Specifically, shes creating millimeter-scale designs of skeletal muscle managed by the motor nerve cells that help us prepare and execute motion in addition to the sensory neurons that tell us how to react to dynamic changes in our environment.
Eventually, her actuators may assist the method to constructing much better robots. Today, even our most advanced robotics are a far cry from being able to reproduce human movement– our capability to run, leap, pivot on a dime, and change direction. But bioengineered muscle made in Ramans laboratory has the potential to create robotics that are more dynamically responsive to their environments.
Raman is “a mechanical engineer through and through,” as she puts it. She made her BS, MS, and PhD in mechanical engineering. Her postdoctoral work at MIT was supported by a LOréal USA for Women in Science Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship from the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine.
Today, Ritu Raman leads the Raman Lab and is an assistant professor in MITs Department of Mechanical Engineering. She is not constrained by traditional concepts of what mechanical engineers should be constructing or the products usually associated with the field. “As a mechanical engineer, Ive pressed back against the concept that people in my field just construct cars and trucks and rockets from polymers, metals, and ceramics. Im interested in building with biology, with living cells,” she says.
Ritu Raman leads the Raman Lab, where she produces adaptive biological products for applications in medicine and machines.
It appears that Ritu Raman was born with an aptitude for engineering. You might say it is in her blood given that her mom is a chemical engineer, her daddy is a mechanical engineer, and her grandpa is a civil engineer.
