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Former engineer Krishnan Radhakrishnan aims to combine clinical practice, research
Krishnan Radhakrishnan, a former engineer, chose New Mexico for his residency because it is the location of the Center for the Spatiotemporal Modeling of Cell Signaling Networks, a National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Complex Biomedical Systems Research.
PHOTO BY GREEN STREET STUDIO A career in medicine and medical research interested Krishnan Radhakrishnan. At age 15, however, when the time came for him to choose a future career path, encouragement from his mathematician father and a strong aptitude for the physical sciences led him to choose engineering. Later, the native of India was awarded a scholarship to study in England, earning his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering, with first-class honors, from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine of London University. Radhakrishnan then moved to the United States for graduate studies in mechanical engineering, obtaining his master of science degree from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. and subsequent research at the Institute for Computational Mechanics in Propulsion, Ohio Aerospace Institute at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, focused on combustion, involving fluid flow, molecular diffusion and the kinetics of complex, highly networked reaction pathways. Several years ago, Radhakrishnan’s mother suffered serious heart problems. Concerned for her health, he remained in constant contact with the physician while performing extensive research to better understand his mother’s condition. This experience renewed his interest in medicine and demonstrated to him how important clinical practice is to medical research. Further reinforcing his desire to study medicine was his collaboration on a biomedical research project about cellular aggregation, in which Radhakrishnan discovered the vast similarities between biological and purely physicochemical processes. Subsequently, he worked with researchers from the University of Washington, NASA Glenn, and the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine on mathematical/computational modeling of biological processes, with the goal of quantifying these processes and their regulation in healthy and pathological states, including deleterious effects of long-term space travel. Radhakrishnan said he decided to attend Case Western Reserve University for medical school mainly because of the curriculum’s strong research component and the school’s organ system approach. The keys to effective medical research, he believes, are both active clinical involvement and previous experience. The flexibility of the program at Case enabled him to continue his research while in medical school. He even was able to attend several research conferences and present papers. Radhakrishnan said his long-term goal is to combine clinical practice with basic and clinical research. He also has plans for academia. He wants to contribute to the increasing understanding of the pathophysiology of disease, the development of suitable therapies and, most importantly, improved patient care. For his research, he plans to continue interdisciplinary collaboration with medical and physical scientists, utilizing mathematical and computational tools in conjunction with biological tools, to study important biomedical problems. Radhakrishnan is serving his residency in internal medicine at the University of New Mexico. He chose this site because it is the location of the Center for the Spatiotemporal Modeling of Cell Signaling Networks, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center of Excellence in Complex Biomedical Systems Research. Radhakrishnan said he finds delight and great promise in the fact that an increasing number of research agencies, such as the NIH, the National Science Foundation and NASA, sponsors of the “Digital Human” and “Digital Astronaut” programs, are recognizing that interdisciplinary collaboration results in greater understanding of disease and improved therapeutics, such as customized medicine. – Lauren Pomykala |
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