Nirmala (Nimmi) Ramanujam^[4] is an educator, innovator, and entrepreneur. Ramanujam is recognized for creating globally accessible technologies for women’s health related to cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment. She is the Robert W. Carr Professor of Engineering and Professor of Cancer Pharmacology and Global Health at Duke University.^[5] She founded the Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies (GWHT)^[6] in 2013 to catalyze impactful research, educational and community outreach activities that promote women’s health.^[5] In 2023, she won the IEEE  Biomedical Engineering Technical Field Award, given annually for outstanding contributions to the field of Biomedical engineering.^[7]  In 2019, she received the social impact Abie Award for making a positive impact on women, technology, and society.^[8] She was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2017.^[9]  She founded Calla Health to commercialize technologies developed at the center. Further she has created a number of initiatives and consortia including WISH, (In)visible Organ and IGNITE to have far reaching impact in cervical cancer, reproductive health and engineering design education, respectively.

Early Life

Ramanujam, who spent most of her formative years in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with brief stays in Mysore and Bangalore, India, was introduced to the world of music at a young age.^[10] Her mother, a veena player, instilled in her a love for the ancient Indian instrument, and Ramanujam dedicated herself to mastering it from the age of five. Her hard work and talent earned her numerous opportunities to perform on radio broadcasts and at concerts throughout her school years.

Ramanujam sees similarities between her approach to music and her engineering work. She compares her purposeful problem-solving in engineering to mastering a musical melody.^[10] Although trained musicians have techniques and tools to assist them in tackling a difficult piece, Ramanujam envisions the solution to engineering problems first and then finds or develops the necessary tools. Her musical background also inspires her to take a more creative and collaborative approach to problem-solving.

Research and career

Ramanujam's research on women's cancers has centered on translational and laboratory research of relevance to breast and cervical cancer.^[11][12] While her guiding principles are similar across breast and cervical cancer, the technical challenges needed to tackle these cancers are inherently different. In the case of cervical cancer prevention, her focus is to develop strategies that reduce attrition to treatment including early screening and diagnostics.^[13] In the breast cancer care cascade, clinical care has principally pivoted towards a focus on how to inform the effectiveness of cancer therapy whether it is surgery or systemic therapy, and that is where she has focused her efforts via molecular and metabolic imaging.^[14] A third area in her research program focuses on low cost ablative strategies for local control of cancer in resource limited settings.^[15] She has also created two companies, Zenalux^[16] and Calla Health,^[17] to commercialize her breast and cervical imaging products, respectively. Additionally, she has created three social innovations programs, WISH to impact cervical cancer prevention in low resource settings, IGNITE to scale social innovation education to students globally and the Calla Campaign to bridge inequities in sexual and reproductive health inequities through story-telling and art.^[18]

She has received recognition for her work through the TR100 Young Innovator Award from MIT, the Global Indus Technovator award from MIT, Era of Hope Scholar awards from the DOD, the Stasnell Family award from the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke, the Emerging Leader in Global Health Award from the Consortium of Universities in Global Health, the Social Impact Abie Award from AnitaB.org, the Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award from the International Society for Optics and Photonics, and the Women in Molecular Imaging Leadership Award (WIMIN) from the World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC).^[19] She is a fellow of several optical and biomedical engineering societies including OSA, SPIE and AIMBE. She has also been elected to the National Academy of Inventors and is a Fulbright fellow.^[20] She is co-editor of the Handbook of Biomedical Optics.^[21] She has presented the global impact of her work at the United Nations. She has been a TedX speaker.^[22]

Honors and awards

Ramanujam has won numerous awards including:

• MIT TR100 Award, 2003
• MIT Indus Technovator Award, 2005
• DOD Era of Hope Scholar award, 2005
• DOD Era of Hope Research Scholar award, 2009
• Fellow of the Optical Society of America, 2009
• Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), 2012
• Fellow of SPIE,^[23] 2013
• Robert W. Carr Jr., Professor of Engineering, Duke University, 2014
• National Academy of Inventors Fellow, 2017
• Emerging Global Health Leader, Consortium of the Universities of Global Health, 2017
• Social Impact Abie Award, AnitaB.org 2019^[24]
• Fulbright Global Scholar Fellowship, 2019^[25]
• WIMIN Leadership Award, World Molecular Imaging Society, 2019
• SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, 2020^[26]
• The Optical Society Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award, 2020^[27]
• IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award, 2023^[28]

Recent publications

Ramanujam's publications include:

• Ramanujam, Nimmi (2019). "Development of Algorithms for Automated Detection of Cervical Pre-Cancers With a Low-Cost, Point-of-Care, Pocket Colposcope". IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 66 (8): 2306–2318. doi:10.1109/TBME.2018.2887208. PMC 6581620. PMID 30575526.
• Ramanujam, Nimmi (2019). "Optical imaging of glucose uptake and mitochondrial membrane potential to characterize Her2 breast tumor metabolic phenotypes. Molecular Cancer Research". Molecular Cancer Research. 17 (7): 1545–1555. doi:10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-18-0618. PMC 6610750. PMID 30902832.
• Ramanujam, Nimmi (2018). "Assessing effects of pressure on tumor and normal tissue physiology using an automated self-calibrated, pressure-sensing probe for diffuse reflectance spectroscopy". Journal of Biomedical Optics. 23 (5): 1–8. Bibcode:2018JBO....23e7004P. doi:10.1117/1.JBO.23.5.057004. PMC 5981029. PMID 29766688.
• Ramanujam, Nimmi (2018). "Metaboloptics: Visualization of the tumor functional landscape via metabolic and vascular imaging". Scientific Reports. 8 (1): 4171. Bibcode:2018NatSR...8.4171M. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-22480-w. PMC 5843602. PMID 29520098.
• Ramanujam, Nimmi (2018). "Image processing and machine learning techniques to automate diagnosis of Lugol's iodine cervigrams for a low-cost point-of-care digital colposcope". In Erickson, David; Ozcan, Aydogan; Levitz, David (eds.). Optics and Biophotonics in Low-Resource Settings IV. Vol. 10485. p. 7. Bibcode:2018SPIE10485E..08A. doi:10.1117/12.2282792. ISBN 9781510614550. S2CID 65751870. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
• Ramanujam, Nimmi (2018). "Optimizing fluorescently-tethered Hsp90 inhibitor dose for maximal specific uptake by breast tumors". In Gioux, Sylvain; Pogue, Brian W; Biggs, Greg (eds.). Molecular-Guided Surgery: Molecules, Devices, and Applications IV. Vol. 10478. p. 3. Bibcode:2018SPIE10478E..04C. doi:10.1117/12.2285210. ISBN 9781510614413. S2CID 80477283. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)

Patents

Ramanujam is an inventor of 20 US patents,^[29] including:

• Systems and methods for spectral analysis of a tissue mass using an instrument, an optical probe, and a Monte Carlo or a diffusion algorithm ^[30]
• Method for extraction of optical properties from diffuse reflectance spectra ^[31]
• Depth-resolved fluorescence instrument with angled excitation ^[32]
• Smart Fiber Optic Sensor System and Methods for Quantitative Optical Spectroscopy.^[33]

References