In this episode, Dr Ritu Raman joins us to discuss how engineered skeletal muscle is being applied to both robotics and medicine. 

We discuss everything from the influences early in Ritu's life and education which drove an interest in engineering, to optogenetics and gene modification. Some themes throughout the conversation are the interesting challenges posed by: inducing repair in muscle, and the complexity of fine motor control.

Ritu is the d’Arbeloff Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. She received her BS from Cornell University and her PhD as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed her postdoctoral research with Prof. Bob Langer at MIT, funded by a L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Fellowship from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.