Photo by Bryce Vickmark for MIT News
Sangeeta Bhatia, that’s the name of the scientist awarded this year with the prestigious Heinz Award, thanks to the development of “microlivers”, artificial human cells that allow drug testing.
Sangeeta is the daughter of two talented immigrants from India. Her father was an engineer and her mother one of the first women to receive an MBA in India, enough motivation to study bioengineering and devote her life to science and research.
Bhatia was trained at Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the Harvard Medical School.
She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Sciences of Massachusetts, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Society of Clinical Investigation.
Years of work have been compensated with a variety of awards, most recently with the Heinz Award 2015. The Heinz Award celebrates people with big contributions in the arts, humanities, actions for environment, public policy, technology, economy and employment. Sangeeta Bhatia won $ 250,000 thanks to her invaluable contribution to research.
Sangeeta Bhatia and her team have worked hard and their efforts led to being pioneers in artificial human “microlivers”. These microlivers are essential for testing the toxicity of drug candidates for manufacturers of doctors and pharmacists.
Bhati’s microlivers has been tested in her lab to find drugs to treat malaria and kill malaria parasites.
One of her greatest achievements is interconnecting living cells with synthetic systems, this enables new applications in tissue regeneration and differentiation of stem cells, medical diagnostics and drug delivery also occur.
With a multidisciplinary approach, Dr. Bhatia and her team have developed a wide and impressive range of inventions that have shaped the human metabolism and the impact of drugs. This has allowed her to work with liver disease and nanomaterials that can be used to control and treat cancer, among other diseases.
Her research has been regularly published in Scientific American, the Boston Globe, Forbes, The Economist, among others.
She has published more than 150 manuscripts, have been cited more than 14,500 times and has provided tutoring to more than 50 students.
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