Her studies link engineering, biology
It's a sad statement on gender equality that in Boston, it's easier to find a Yankees fan than a woman engineer. Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, is a rarity on account of her gender and because she's a woman of color in a field that's primarily male. Not to mention that at 38, she's one of the most accomplished young scientists in Kendall Square.
In January Bhatia made headlines for her work in developing extremely tiny particles that mimic blood platelets -- a feat of engineering that someday could dramatically change cancer treatment.
"We've been interested in making nanoparticles that can detect tumors and deliver chemotherapy locally," says Bhatia. "Some people call it analogous to the movie "Fantastic Voyage" in which a submarine is miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of a human body. "The idea sounds fantastical, but the technologies are there to do it."
Bhatia's Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies is trying to build microscopic particles that can repair and rebuild human tissue. Nanoparticles that mimic blood platelets are capable of homing in on tumors, then clumping around them. Potentially, the particles could coagulate into a big enough clot to choke the blood supply to the tumor, or they could deliver a payload of drugs, or they could help send an image to an MRI machine.
"In the next five years we expect to have these particles homing, carrying, and imaging," says Bhatia.
In addition to cancer applications, her lab is researching therapies for liver disease, specifically by developing in vitro models to study liver cells -- a tricky proposition, since the liver is so complex. Nanotechnology is now allowing them to construct models that will help test clinical drugs.
"All drugs are metabolized in the liver," says Bhatia. "We hope to make drug tests safer." Lastly, Bhatia's lab constructs miniature devices that can be used to conduct biological experiments in an efficient, simple way. "They're chips that look like microscope slides, and they allow you to do lots of experiments at once."
Said Christopher Chen, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, Bhatia "has a unique gift. There are still exceedingly few scientists that can cross between technological and biomedical fields with such fluency."
A native of Lexington, Bhatia's father was an engineer. "I was the sort of kid who liked to take apart the phone," she says, and by the time she took high school biology she had developed a lifelong love of science. "I used to say that I wanted to be the science adviser to the president," she laughs.
While earning a biomedical engineering degree at Brown University, Bhatia spent summers at biotech and pharmaceutical companies, but the industry life didn't suit her. "I realized I was addicted to the mix of ideas in academics," she says. After taking a joint medical degree and PhD at Harvard and MIT, she earned her professorial wings teaching bioengineering at UC San Diego.
"But you get spoiled in Boston," she says. "You tend to think that Cambridge is the intellectual center of the universe, and in some ways it is." Two years ago she moved back home to be the director of her own laboratory at MIT.
Bhatia realizes that her story is sadly uncommon among women. "There are so many fundamentals that an engineer has to grasp," she says. "The fun stuff comes later, and unless you have someone always telling you that it's an exciting field, a lot of women drop out. You have to hang in there."
Being a role model for women aspiring to engineering careers is a source of pride for Bhatia. "I want young girls to think that engineering is great. A lot of them don't make a connection between this profession and their iPods. I want girls to know that you can make an impact and still have a life. I tuck my girls in at night. I take vacations. It's not an unattainable goal." 