Global Disease Warrior
Dr. Manu Platt wages war against ailments that afflict millions worldwide.
Cancer, HIV, sickle cell, the mere mention of these ailments can strike fear. Georgia Tech biomedical engineering researcher and professor Dr. Manu Platt deals with them every day. His battle against these diseases has taken him across the world.
Platt’s research at Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering focuses on tissue remodeling in arteries due to infection. Platt is tackling HIV head on with this research. It has led him to one of the nations where HIV infection rates are the highest – South Africa.
“Up to 15 percent of the population is HIV positive,” Dr. Platt explains. In 2013, and again in 2014, Platt traveled to South Africa to test the white blood cells of HIV patients. The data collected looks at the cardiovascular damage patients might be suffering, and if patients are following the prescribed drug regimen.
Dr. Platt devised the methodology on campus, but traveling to Africa allows him to apply his research in another real world setting. “It’s been a great way to take things we do in the lab in Atlanta and optimize them for low-cost low-resource uses in developing countries.”
In 2013, the research went so well that Dr. Platt traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to test samples in another nation where disease-fighting resources are scarce.
While Dr. Platt fights global health crises, he makes just as big of an impact right in our own backyard. Platt co-founded Project Engage, a program designed to expose and engage minority students to science, technology, engineering, and math. Teens from Atlanta area schools are mentored by Georgia Tech researchers and spend time conducting experiments in labs.
“The more barriers we remove between these students and research universities, the more likely they will feel that they, too, deserve to be on campus and can be just as successful,” Platt says.
Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering
Research Horizons Magazine; The Buzz on Bioscience