From India and Kenya to the US – and (Bio)Mechanical Engineering
Ritu Raman lab logo
Ritu Raman, Ph.D., took a very practical path to her STEM studies and current position as the d’Arbeloff Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. But it was a journey, and not a straightforward one at that. Now she runs a lab that designs adaptive living materials for applications ranging from medicine to machines. Today, Raman and her team are especially focused on engineering the neuromuscular system to restore mobility and to power robots.
Growing up in India and Kenya and moving to the U.S. before high school, the mechanical engineer said that when she was applying to college, “I knew that there was a possibility that I might not be able to stay on my parents’ visa after I turned 21, and I knew that you’re more likely to get a work visa here if you have a technical degree.” So that’s what Raman pursued.
She described that motivation and an unexpected twist in her education path during a recent wide-ranging discussion with Sandra Lee Heyman STEM Career Awareness Fellows. After considering a variety of engineering options based on what courses she liked in high school, Raman concluded that “mechanical engineering just seemed like it was the most broad and it was the most physics based, which is what appealed to me.” Raman had been inspired by what she had seen and heard about space exploration. Not having given it much too much thought beyond “space is cool,” she arrived at Cornell University intending to register for an aerospace-related engineering course. As is the case with many STEM professionals the fellows have met with, a chance disappointment ended up leading Raman to follow a different yet very rewarding education and career journey.
“That dream about space was very quickly diverted because I couldn’t get into the intro to aerospace class. It was full by the time I could figure out how the course registration website worked. Very disappointing.” A chance conversation with another freshman changed her life’s trajectory. “She was taking a class called intro to biomedical engineering and said that the professor had a British accent, he was very funny, and he was a great teacher. I wasn’t really interested in ‘biomedical’; I didn’t know what that was, but I decided to take the class.” The professor turned out to be a great educator, according to Raman, and “He made a compelling case that engineers could have this really important role in designing medicines and implantable devices and prosthetics and could advance human health.” She said, “For a long time I’d sort of written off medicine because I didn’t have the capacity or interest or money to go to med school. So that was just never on the table for me. But he opened up the possibility that mechanical engineering could help me have an impact on human health and people’s lives.”
Not willing to let go of her dreams of space quite yet, but unable to secure a paid internship both because of her relatively young age (she began college at 16) and because she was an international student, Raman turned to unpaid research internships in laboratories around Cornell, “many of which happened to be in biology and biomedical science, and which were fun.”
She told the fellows that even though mechanical engineering – like engineering programs in general – is very rigorous and many courses are predetermined, there is a great deal of flexibility. “As it turns out, what I ended up doing was more in the biomedical realm. There was that tunability that meant that you could choose what you wanted to learn about. And I think when something is hard, but you chose it, it’s much easier to motivate yourself to put in the effort and get excited about it.”
After receiving her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Biomedical Engineering, from Cornell, Raman went on to earn M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering as a National Science Foundation Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a professor at MIT, Raman sees hundreds of people every year who are majoring in mechanical engineering and other engineering disciplines. She emphasized, “You definitely don't need a graduate degree. If you pick an engineering major, you can get a great job right out of undergrad that span a wide variety of disciplines.”
Why then did Raman go directly to graduate school? Although really liking research, Raman still wanted to get at least some sort of industry experience before graduating. A startup company offered her an unpaid position the summer following her junior year. The company was working on a biomedical device, a diagnostic for helping those who have potentially deadly sepsis infections. “I noticed that everybody who had a job that I thought was very exciting – the CEO, the chief scientific officer, the head of research and development – everyone who seemed like they were in a position of power and directing the science and doing cool things, had a Ph.D. And they told me that in the field of biomedical science and life sciences, you need to have a Ph.D.” That was her primary motivation for pursuing the additional training, reinforced when she discovered that “grad school for a Ph.D. doesn't cost money, so it doesn't mean additional funds from my parents. It doesn't mean taking out a loan. It just means getting into a graduate program that will then cover tuition and pay you a stipend.”
With so many varieties of engineering specialties – several of which she described to the fellows – how and when should students make choices about which to pursue? Raman counseled, “Rather than going about it in terms of a major, I would pick a problem in the world that you think is particularly interesting and important to solve. And then you can ‘back calculate’ a major from that goal based on what things you most enjoy doing and what classes are most interesting to you.”
Raman’s interests today revolve around her MIT lab where she leads a team of 10+ researchers – including undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows – who think about how we can use living biological materials as functional components of machines, exploring the next frontier in robotics that may lead to real world applications like creating muscle tissue to restore mobility after traumatic injuries.
In response to specific questions from the fellows, Raman also offered:
How physics and mechanical engineering are different but related to each other; many students go into mechanical engineering programs having a physics undergraduate background.
Consider applying to a college program that builds in lots of flexibility. Typically, freshman level engineering programs look the same across the board; in sophomore and junior years you will have more information about your interests and will want to be able to take more discipline specific classes.
In high school “you are told you should try to be good at everything. But that stops happening once you get to college. You can just choose to be very good at one thing.... So the thing you should ask yourself in picking a major is: of all of the options you have, what do you like the most? And remember it doesn't have to be the thing that is easiest for you, or that you get the best grades in… just the thing that will help you solve the problems you see in the world.”
Internships during high school can be very helpful in understanding what you might want to study, but they are not essential. There are plenty of opportunities to do that at the undergraduate level. Summer programs that last a few weeks also can provide very valuable hands-on-experience.
“If you pick an engineering major, you can get a great job right out of undergrad.”
The Sandra Lee Heyman Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in memory of Sandra Lee Heyman, a long-time mathematics teacher at the elementary, middle school, high school, and community college levels. The 18-month long Fellowship is aimed at promising high school students who have the opportunity to meet with STEM leaders, visit prominent institutions in the Washington, D.C., area, and access peers and mentors to support career exploration in STEM fields. There are multiple ways to support the Fellowship program, and donations to the Foundation are tax deductible.