6/29/2017 Bill Bowman
Written by Bill Bowman
Click here for more on Ritu or to read her blog posts.
MechSE PhD student Ritu Raman has won the 2015 Illinois Innovation Prize, a campus-wide competition among student entrepreneurs. Awarded by the Technology Entrepreneur Center, the annual prize includes $20,000 for further developing the winner’s innovation.
“I think she has the true spirit of what it means to be innovative,” said Dr. Rashid Bashir, Raman’s advisor and the Head of the Department of Bioengineering. “She has great ideas, she’s a great researcher, and she’s already published and contributed to wonderful papers.”
Raman focuses her work on developing and commercializing 3D printing technologies for applications in biomedical engineering. Specifically, she uses 3D printing to manufacture biological building blocks, or BioBlocks, which can harness the innate abilities of biological materials to sense, process, and respond to a variety of dynamic environmental signals in real time. Such building blocks can be used to design bio-integrated machines, or BioBots, that can self-organize, self-heal, and self-replicate in response to a complex array of environmental cues.
By crowd-sourcing the design rules and principles of building with biology in undergraduate classrooms, Raman plans to use experiential learning and empirical discovery as a tool to train the next generation of makers, builders, and inventors.
“You have to not only have great ideas, but also know how to execute and how to bring a team together and how to educate the people around you about the idea,” Bashir said. “Ritu has all of these components.”
Andreas C. Cangellaris, Dean of the College of Engineering, announced Raman as the 2015 winner at an awards ceremony April 17 at the Illini Union.
“Illinois is truly one of the best places to pursue engineering entrepreneurship,” Raman said. “It’s such a vibrant and collegial atmosphere. I love being here, and I’m so glad I came here for graduate school.”
MechSE PhD student Ritu Raman has won the 2015 Illinois Innovation Prize, a campus-wide competition among student entrepreneurs. Awarded by the Technology Entrepreneur Center, the annual prize includes $20,000 for further developing the winner’s innovation.
“I think she has the true spirit of what it means to be innovative,” said Dr. Rashid Bashir, Raman’s advisor and the Head of the Department of Bioengineering. “She has great ideas, she’s a great researcher, and she’s already published and contributed to wonderful papers.”
Raman focuses her work on developing and commercializing 3D printing technologies for applications in biomedical engineering. Specifically, she uses 3D printing to manufacture biological building blocks, or BioBlocks, which can harness the innate abilities of biological materials to sense, process, and respond to a variety of dynamic environmental signals in real time. Such building blocks can be used to design bio-integrated machines, or BioBots, that can self-organize, self-heal, and self-replicate in response to a complex array of environmental cues.
By crowd-sourcing the design rules and principles of building with biology in undergraduate classrooms, Raman plans to use experiential learning and empirical discovery as a tool to train the next generation of makers, builders, and inventors.
“You have to not only have great ideas, but also know how to execute and how to bring a team together and how to educate the people around you about the idea,” Bashir said. “Ritu has all of these components.”
Andreas C. Cangellaris, Dean of the College of Engineering, announced Raman as the 2015 winner at an awards ceremony April 17 at the Illini Union.
“Illinois is truly one of the best places to pursue engineering entrepreneurship,” Raman said. “It’s such a vibrant and collegial atmosphere. I love being here, and I’m so glad I came here for graduate school.”
MechSE PhD student Ritu Raman has won the 2015 Illinois Innovation Prize, a campus-wide competition among student entrepreneurs. Awarded by the Technology Entrepreneur Center, the annual prize includes $20,000 for further developing the winner’s innovation.
“I think she has the true spirit of what it means to be innovative,” said Dr. Rashid Bashir, Raman’s advisor and the Head of the Department of Bioengineering. “She has great ideas, she’s a great researcher, and she’s already published and contributed to wonderful papers.”
Raman focuses her work on developing and commercializing 3D printing technologies for applications in biomedical engineering. Specifically, she uses 3D printing to manufacture biological building blocks, or BioBlocks, which can harness the innate abilities of biological materials to sense, process, and respond to a variety of dynamic environmental signals in real time. Such building blocks can be used to design bio-integrated machines, or BioBots, that can self-organize, self-heal, and self-replicate in response to a complex array of environmental cues.
By crowd-sourcing the design rules and principles of building with biology in undergraduate classrooms, Raman plans to use experiential learning and empirical discovery as a tool to train the next generation of makers, builders, and inventors.
“You have to not only have great ideas, but also know how to execute and how to bring a team together and how to educate the people around you about the idea,” Bashir said. “Ritu has all of these components.”
Andreas C. Cangellaris, Dean of the College of Engineering, announced Raman as the 2015 winner at an awards ceremony April 17 at the Illini Union.
“Illinois is truly one of the best places to pursue engineering entrepreneurship,” Raman said. “It’s such a vibrant and collegial atmosphere. I love being here, and I’m so glad I came here for graduate school.”
MechSE PhD student Ritu Raman has won the 2015 Illinois Innovation Prize, a campus-wide competition among student entrepreneurs. Awarded by the Technology Entrepreneur Center, the annual prize includes $20,000 for further developing the winner’s innovation.
“I think she has the true spirit of what it means to be innovative,” said Dr. Rashid Bashir, Raman’s advisor and the Head of the Department of Bioengineering. “She has great ideas, she’s a great researcher, and she’s already published and contributed to wonderful papers.”
Raman focuses her work on developing and commercializing 3D printing technologies for applications in biomedical engineering. Specifically, she uses 3D printing to manufacture biological building blocks, or BioBlocks, which can harness the innate abilities of biological materials to sense, process, and respond to a variety of dynamic environmental signals in real time. Such building blocks can be used to design bio-integrated machines, or BioBots, that can self-organize, self-heal, and self-replicate in response to a complex array of environmental cues.
By crowd-sourcing the design rules and principles of building with biology in undergraduate classrooms, Raman plans to use experiential learning and empirical discovery as a tool to train the next generation of makers, builders, and inventors.
“You have to not only have great ideas, but also know how to execute and how to bring a team together and how to educate the people around you about the idea,” Bashir said. “Ritu has all of these components.”
Andreas C. Cangellaris, Dean of the College of Engineering, announced Raman as the 2015 winner at an awards ceremony April 17 at the Illini Union.
“Illinois is truly one of the best places to pursue engineering entrepreneurship,” Raman said. “It’s such a vibrant and collegial atmosphere. I love being here, and I’m so glad I came here for graduate school.”
“Illinois is truly one of the best places to pursue engineering entrepreneurship,” Raman said. “It’s such a vibrant and collegial atmosphere. I love being here, and I’m so glad I came here for graduate school.” and collegial atmosphere. I love being here, and I’m so glad I came here for graduate school.”