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Engineering better medicine with Dr. Aishwarya Bandla

Engineering better medicine

with Dr. Aishwarya Bandla

Gist

Can a woman from an engineering background become a successful Biomedical Researcher? Dr. Aishwarya Bandla talks with Scikonnect about her journey as a Scientist and what it means to be a woman in science.

Dr. Bandla has been recently recognized as one of the top 100 Women in technology in Singapore. Currently, she is working as a Principal Investigator and Head of Translational Core at The N1 Institute of Health, Singapore. She did her Engineering from Anna University and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from The National University of Singapore. She is also providing her services as a volunteer to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Tune in, won’t you?

 

 


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Transcript

Pragya:

Biopatrika, your very own science communication platform, bringing science closer to you in many ways. Today, SciKonnect by Biopatrika welcomes all science enthusiasts to our podcast on Life of a Researcher and Networking. I, Pragya Gupta and my co-host Nikhil Kumar Tulsian, have been given the opportunity to welcome a very enigmatic scientist, Dr Aishwarya Bandla, to share her story about a researcher’s life, and her magical formula of networking.

Nikhil:

Hello everyone, I am Nikhil, and it’s my pleasure to introduce my friend, Aishwarya Bandla. She completed her Bachelors of Engineering from Anna University back in 2009, and then, she pursued a job at Infosys. During the end years of Infosys, she dreamt of doing something more relevant to the world, and then she pursued her Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering at National University of Singapore. Currently, she heads the Translational Core, and is involved in a lot of clinical devices making. Let’s hear from herself. So, hi Aishwarya. Thank you for joining us and talking to us. Maybe you can talk a bit about yourself and share a glimpse into your projects.

Aishwarya:

Of course. Thanks Nikhil and Pragya for doing this and congratulations to Biopatrika for all your excellent initiatives. And I’m sure this is going to create an impact in it’s own way, and I’m honoured to be part of this initiative.

So, like Nikhil has mentioned, my journey to be a Biomedical engineer scientist has been a little bit of a journey of curiosity, serendipity, and making and taking opportunities. So, I started off with a curiosity of looking at researchers in lab coats and that’s what triggered me to look at what can be done at the intersection of medicine and engineering.

So, I started off with an undergrad in Electrical Engineering to get a solid, fundamental training in engineering, which can then help me to implement or advance technology for the field of medicine. Nikhil mentioned Infosys which was a little bit of a detour. We’ll talk about it. I think each of these experiences has added a little facet of itself into me, which has moulded me into the professional which I am today.

My experiences at NUS have given me such a rich training and expertise in biomedical engineering and scientific training and pursuit itself. Through my training, I’ve had a chance to learn and delve into pre-clinical research, be it animal or in vivo or in vitro, and I also had a chance to work in projects, which are directly looking into development of medical devices, for the use of supportive care in cancer.

One such project, what we started, what started off as an idea, a decade ago, has now materialised into a product to reach patients, and I should say that I’m really honoured and fortunate to have been part of that journey. This project is to tackle a problem which cancer patients commonly face as a side effect of chemotherapy. It’s called chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy, which is pain at the fingertips and toe tips, which is a side effect of chemo. The other ones are hair loss and nausea. And though we have very developed treatment and management measures for all the other side effects, CIPN is something which has not been looked into. It’s just managed with painkillers, and the beauty of the institute which I had a chance to work with, is where there happened to be a confluence of scientists, clinicians, technologists, biologists, and you know, industry leaders. What happened at this juncture was an idea of using technology to tackle this side effect. And we came up with a simple idea of using cooling, which we call as cryotherapy, which then advanced to the addition of certain other factors, going on to cryo-compression. We tested this idea in pilot clinical trials in healthy volunteers and cancer patients, derived a lot of design inputs from those initial trials, and went back to make a device which is bespoke for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

We’re excited to test these devices in our upcoming clinical trials.

Nikhil:

This is amazing! In the last two minutes, I could re-live the life of a researcher in the perspective of you, as well as me. While  I had a more traditional pathway of Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD, yours is more exciting as a life, doing Bachelor’s, job, PhD, now doing more clinical, like there are various turns here and there. This is what a researcher’s life is.

And now currently, you’re collaborating with multiple people- clinicians, doctors, academicians, institutes. And also, you do a lot of volunteering at the IEEE, which we’ll talk about it later.

Aishwarya:

Certainly.

Nikhil:

So, really, it is quite impressive and I’m sure that our listeners all across the world will be definitely motivated and piqued to pursue their dreams.

As everyone has a turning point in their lives – what to decide, like when to decide, and way to decide, that they have to do and want to do or not, and what career path they want to take. At what point you decided to take on the scientific pursuit? Was it during the Infosys or you just tested out to think of ‘let’s try that PhD’?

Aishwarya:

Yeah, I think that’s an excellent question really. Always makes us look back at our journey, and hindsight is 20-20. And it’s interesting to think about what went on in our minds and what are the experiences which shaped us, which led to where we are, each of us, as scientists. For me, like I mentioned, it started off as curiosity, looking at my cousin’s sister, and also, you know, and other scientists in lab coats, as I mentioned. That’s something probably I want to try out, maybe want to be one of them someday.

So, I did not have any training or sneak peek into research while I was in India, and my experiences in NUS is what has, you know, been all my research journey. When I took on a Master’s in NUS to try out what research is, and if, you know, if I was cut out to be a researcher. And fortunately, for me, the people around me were really encouraging in that, you know…

I think that is very important when you’re starting off with something, that initial push and motivation to go along and I was lucky to have that in great mentors, and a very nice team of buddies around me, and Nikhil would agree with that, I’m sure. And all these experiences led to me embracing the possibilities that I could pursue my further fascination in biomedical engineering as a career and research as a career. And I guess that led on to me realizing my passion in the intersection of technology and medicine. And I think for me it was also important to try out different things. Like I mentioned, I have worked in the Pure Bench side with animal models. I have also had a chance to work with clinical technology, and I found that I enjoy working with people from multidisciplinary backgrounds and knitting all these different skill sets together to advance technology.

Nikhil:

That is amazing to hear, like pursuing science, as when you joined during a master’s and then converting into PhD. I’m sure many people would agree with that.

Pragya:

Indeed, it takes a lot of courage and mental strength to take such a big leap from being an engineer and then transitioning into a researcher. So like there was a drastic change in the field matrix, like a then engineer, now into biomedicine. So looking back last few years, do you miss being a software engineer or do you like your role more as a biomedical scientist?


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Credits

Hosts: Pragya Gupta, Nikhil Tulsian

Editing: Samriti Sharma, Nikhil Tulsian, Virender Singh, Salma, Ramya, Vikramsingh Gujar

Social: Charu Gupta, Albertha Joseph-Alexander

Music by Aditya Sutar

Meet the Hosts

 

Nikhil

Nikhil Tulsian


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Dr. Nikhil Tulsian is a postdoctoral researcher whose work is central to understanding  infectious diseases, antibody characterization, virus dynamics and regulation. Being a SciKonnect podcast host enables him to fulfill his interest of inculcating the spirit of science in people.

Pragya Gupta


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Beside being a passionate stem cell researcher, Pragya Gupta is trained in Indian classical music, enjoys baking, inventive craftwork and learning about different cultures. She is currently doing her PhD at the University of Melbourne in Australia, where she is researching new ways to treat brain cancers.

About the SciKonnect podcast

SciKonnect Podcast provides a glimpse of daily life in academia and industry. Our hosts from different countries take you on a riveting, emotional & insightful journey that bares it all on how we do science and how we succeed. These are the stories you ‘want to learn’ rather than ‘had to learn’.


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