Crossing biological barriers for better drug delivery
When Samir Mitragotri entered the University of Mumbai as an undergraduate in the late 1980s, there was only one academic option for students in the technology track: chemical engineering. “None of us really knew what chemical engineering was when we chose to study it, and I was pretty sure I was going to end up working at a petrochemical company,” he says. But when he decided to continue his studies with a Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he discovered something that would forever change his life: biology. “It was really mind-opening, the idea that engineers have a place in biology, and that there are biological problems that can be addressed by engineers in a unique way.” Today Mitragotri is, appropriately, the Hiller Professor of Bioengineering and Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Wyss Institute and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “My lab likes...