Shamit Shrivastava

Experimental Physicist

I always wanted to be a physicist but growing up in a middle income family in India means that job prospects take first priority, so I did the balancing act of studying Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in the picturesque north-eastern city of Guwahati. There I pursued my research interests independently and took special interest in thermodynamics and nanotechnology. These interests led me to a research internship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and I fell in love with the city of Boston. It was here that I also realised the important role engineers can play in medical technology. Therefore, after my undergrad, I enrolled for the MS-PhD program in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University, where I met Prof. Matthias Schneider. I was immediately hooked into his ambitious and inspiring ideas, which involved applying classical thermodynamics and acoustics to fundamental questions in biology. After completing my PhD, I joined the BUBBL group at the University of Oxford as a researcher in June 2015 where I developed methods for enhancing drug delivery using sound waves. I am currently working at the Rosalind Franklin Institute, where I will be developing new diagnostic devices based on the interaction of light and sound.