Q.   Is your pay fair?
A.   As per faculty-salary surveys conducted by the American Association of University Professors as well as my own personal opinion, professors do not choose a faculty career in research or in imparting higher education for the money. Persons of equivalent qualification (PhD or higher) receive far higher salaries in industry.  However, the opportunity cost of moving from academia to industry is the extraordinary flexibility in work schedules, academic freedom and most importantly the inspirational energy in academia.  Therefore, salaries in academia are most certainly an excellent trade-off for those PhD qualified individuals with a strong leadership capabilities or an entrepreneurial bent of mind.

Q.  Would you choose the same degree again?
A.   As a professor in academia and a recent PhD graduate working on funded entrepreneurial as well as non-dilutive grant funded pursuits, if I were given an opportunity to leverage more of my ongoing research to obtain a 'second' PhD degree, I would be delighted to do so. Each year post-graduation, I have generated an equivalent volume of research as that which I did during the 3 year period of my PhD.  The process of writing a thesis is equivalent to organizing a series of published research papers into a volume of coherent and continuous scientific material which addresses a real problem - in my example, a clinical problem.  Therefore, obtaining additional PhD degrees would be tantamount to obtaining a reward for conducting a successful research program!

             I write this article on my blog owing to demand for a personal introduction to my research and my research program.  Allow me to start by introducing myself: my name is Prahlad G Menon. I am an assistant professor with the electrical & computer engineering department with Carnegie Mellon University’s joint institute of engineering with China’s Sun Yat-sen University, and also the founder of Pittsburgh based QuantMD, LLC – cutting edge medical device company heathcare analytics space. This is my story of rising up the ranks from a lowly graduate student in academia, en-route to becoming a Professor in a top league engineering school.                   
            Today I stand before you as an engineer, scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. I received my Masters of Science degree in mechanical engineering, in 2010 soon after having completed a B.Tech in mechanical engineering from one of the premier National Institutes of Technology in India, and eventually completed my Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, both from Carnegie Mellon, in 2013.  In 2011, I founded QuantMD LLC, originally a brain-child of some cutting-edge new healthcare analytics technology leveraging advanced time-resolved magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to diagnose coronary heart disease at the earliest possible stage.  Today the research areas in which I am published in peer reviewed scientific publications and additionally serve as a scientific reviewer for include biofluids, biomechanics, medical imaging and computational modeling, more or less entirely in the cardiovascular healthcare space.  This includes paradigm shifting work that has had application to early detection methods, surgical planning and interventional guidance for treating patients with heart disease, as well as innovative medical devices targeted at improving blood-flow dynamics in young children with congenital heart disease during complex operative procedures.
            Technology, innovation and better-care-at-lower-costs for healthcare are the three central drivers that make me tick.  Additionally, my efforts for impacting healthcare field and the dedicated focus of my pursuing graduate studies, have been predominantly stimulated by my burning desire to see technologies conventionally innovated and perfected “outside” of the healthcare space (especially in aerospace or automobile industries) applied to medicine, in the clinic.  My life’s effort has therefore been founded around the centerpieces of physics based medical image analytics, high performance computational modeling & informatics, the notion of pre-operative surgical planning and finally medical device innovation.
            Graduate school in Carnegie Mellon, the extended notion of “freedom” that academia inherently embodies, as well as the opportunities presented as a result of having been being immersed in a productive and innovative academic environment, including the entrepreneurial spirit and grant funding, have all been together central to my rising up in academia from my beginnings as an engineer – one of many – from India.  Working hand-in-hand with medical researchers and practicing physicians offered invaluable exposure to research principles that catapulted me into the exciting world of biomedical research. Over the course of my PhD, I was able to leverage the knowledge and experience gained from the worlds of diesel engine combustion modeling for improving brake specific fuel consumptions and engine efficiencies by 1-2 % increments – my early research focus as an undergraduate student in India –  in solving complex life-changing biomedical problems in cardiovascular healthcare.
            So, what do I engineer these days..?  Well, I engineer the pediatric and adult cardiovascular system using high performance computing based vascular blood flow analytics and shape optimization studies.  The concept of engineering a better vascular intervention is quite new and comes as a tidal wave of change to the conventional surgical practice, which my close friend and cardiologist colleague often refers to as, "a glorified plumbing job" , through inventive inputs from the engineering world,  But at this point let me clarify that I am not a doctor or a surgeon – I am a biomedical engineer applying engineering to cardiovascular medicine.   As a “cardiovascular engineer”, my mission has remained steadfast on increasing sensitivity and specificity of contemporary non-invasive diagnostic techniques through novel image-derived biomarkers for primary identification of cardiovascular disease and objectifying decision-making during interventions; therefore enabling better healthcare at lower costs.  This idea embodies medical technology of the future which will not only empower cardiologists to administer the right treatment options in a timely fashion but also surgeons to optimize interventional outcomes by way of meticulous intra-operative guidance, using technology that introduces optimization to the science and art of medicine. Such technology has potential to obviate the requirement of several invasive diagnostic procedures, and offer the same results at a fraction of the cost through just non-invasive image data.
            Finally, what does It take to succeed as a biomedical engineer..?  In addition to a researcher’s productivity, ability to successfully understand and practice engendering a ‘research culture’ is essential– this is also the only way to secure an entrepreneurial future in today’s high-tech research community, and this culture come from graduate school. By ‘research culture’ I mean a combination of strong fundamental knowledge, technical prowess, responsible research conduct and more importantly a lot of motivation for free public showcasing of good science. Another up-side here is that employment of medical scientists is expected to increase at the rapid rate of 36% between 2010 and 2020 –  well above the national averages for other professions!   Feel free to contact me either via email (pgmenon@andrew.cmu.edu or prahlad.menon@quant.md) or via my website: www.justcallharry.com if you have an interest in biomedical engineering or pursuing a PhD as a graduate student with my research group.


NOTE: this article was also published on DegreeStory.com, and is accessible via the following hyperlink:
http://www.degreestory.com/browse/doctorate/science-engineering/engineering/ph-d-biomedical-engineering-a-final-frontier-a-personal-story-of-rising-up-in-academia-as-a-entrepreneur-impacting-healthcare

New technologies that will truly weave their way into the bustle of reimbursable routine clinical practice are hardly ever those that only address a real clinical need.  Successfully 'translated' university-grown technologies require to have a resounding impact upon financials (it must save someone significant amounts of money!) and technical-workflows (it must save someone time!) in the healthcare system, in addition to addressing a clinical need in order to see the light of day.  

The initial QuantMD angle for attempting to address this conundrum has been that smart and targeted interventions by early non-invasive diagnostic screening earlier in the patient care process guarantees improved outcomes through a patient-focused care delivery model obviating unnecessary invasive exams, minimizing radiation exposure and saving lives through well-planned physics-informed patient-specific surgical procedures.

The quintessential entrepreneurial mindset for one fronting such demanding medical technology projects therefore needs to be at the confluence of of strong fundamental knowledge, technical prowess and never-failing wit to address inquiries - which are often insinuations that turn into stumbling blocks - with gusto and charm. Further, a CEO must be adept at being persuasive and doling out subtle blandishments in this regard especially when dealing with those "skilled in the art".

Employing physics and computing to solve new life-changing biomedical problems spanning diagnostics to surgical guidance is now synonymous with my overarching mission as a human being as well as what I’m recognized as being capable of today.  It all started with my being assigned to the cardiac MRI division of Allegheny General Hospital as part of the BME Clinical Practicum program, through which I chose to continue some cardiac MRI research that began with Dr.Mark Doyle, Dr.Robert Biederman and Dr.Steve Jones during the early months of my PhD, on my own time.  The research exposure offered me as a graduate student, invaluable experience in understanding the principles of biomedical research.  This exposure is also ideal to provide those essential ‘early research’ experiences to hard-working and proactive undergraduates considering careers in scientific research. While research experience is not a requirement for admission to medical school, it can enhance preparation for a career in medicine as well, while offering students opportunity to identify with their interests through an introspective matching of key competencies and the cutting edge in the science. 

My personal experience in the Pittsburgh cardiovascular research community has resulted in hands-on, supervised and unsupervised original research investigations relevant to two main programmatic areas in biomedical research: 1) cardiovascular biomechanics i.e. both mechanics and fluid dynamics investigated using medical imaging; and 2) surgical planning for a range of minimally invasive and open-heart cardiac and vascular procedures.   My sole motivation for devoting both time and energies to out-of-curriculum research despite my PhD-related workload has been to excel as a medical researcher.  My goal has been to conduct impactful research targeted at improving overall human health through physics-informed diagnostic image analytics and informed interventional guidance.  Given that such involvement is not paid-hire, it is important to remember that motivations have to result from a desire to contribute to the science.  Such motivation has created an inveterate need within me to want to contribute to enhancing the cumulative knowledge that we know as the biomedical science today while continuously innovating ways to improve how we conduct it.

A key aspect of such training experiences to an engineer wishing to transition into the biomedical space is to transition an engineer’s governing perspectives on deductive rationale and proof-of-concept testing to a more inductive line of thought that capitalizes on engineering deductions of-course, but validates such rationale through clinical trials and other investigative methods to statistically prove findings or merits of a technology.  But with that I move on to less tangible but by far more important learning experiences from here on. Although a student researcher often drives the projects they are involved with, there is a distinct difference between their involvements in contrast to that of a “PI” on a research project.  As a student and innovator, my objective wasn’t to “raise money to solve a problem” but to simply ‘solve problems’ with little or no financial requirements or commitments.  The way to have opportunity to ‘solve problems’ is therefore only by instilling a reassuring sense of a mutually beneficial research relationships with interested collaborators having the right resources at their disposal and a of-course similarly aligned ideals.  Additionally, for fruitful endeavors collaborators must have a passion to ‘solve problems’ too, much like the student researcher, rather than a mere whimsical desire to “raise money to have a problem solved” – a distinction with a very striking difference.

The major resource which I was able to capitalize upon that has been at my disposal as an extroverted researcher keeping pace with medical professionals in time-zones across the globe is ‘data’ –   IRB approved retrospectively gathered MRI, CT, Ultrasound imaging data acquisitions.  Access to image data acquired from multiple sources around Pittsburgh – access to which is granted through repeated proven research method and rapid result delivery –  is likely the sole most important factor that has catapulted my research endeavors.  Given sufficient persuasion and promising results, my personal experience goes to show that interested researchers, physicians / surgeons, as well as enthusiastic supporters in industry wishing to employ proprietary methods to derive value for prognostic, diagnostic or surgical guidance needs from medical image data can also create opportunity to conduct IRB and IACUC approved prospective animal (and human) studies.  This is the real clincher when it comes to translating research technology outside of academia and into clinics that make an actual difference to human lives.  The right research ideologies cultivated as a result of interactions – both technical and business related – have resulted in my forging even stronger collaborations outside of the Pittsburgh healthcare and entrepreneurial community; in Europe, India, China.  So, a key idea to capture here is that while initial collaborations resulted in creating good research, it was the research ‘culture’ that cultivates both new collaborations and compelling interest in new research.

Therefore, the quintessential research mindset is achieved not only by virtue of strong research method but also strongly ingrained, morally sound ideologies for research conduct.  Collaborating with a research group is for “you”, not for anyone else; meaning that a student is never doing a favor to anybody by their involvement with a research project, except perhaps themselves.  My personal experience with some of my intern hires (for QuantMD, LLC) and research assistants have best informed me that this is a little known or perhaps little appreciated point.  While high impact research benefits everyone, including the researcher that does all the real work, it is a result of proactive ‘sharing’ of goals and motivations and more importantly a lot of ‘free public showcasing’ of work often converging only after 100’s of sleepless hours, in order to gain but a modicum of attention from a clinician.  So, if you’re not the kind who replies to emails in minutes and has the ability to think on your feet – perhaps consider some lessons in punctuality and wit prior to getting into biomedical research.

Finally, after all the training, as a respected provider of technology for enhancing the healthcare practice it is of utmost importance to understand the repercussions of your actions.  Accountability for the actions that result an analytic that you are involved with producing is very important to remember. As medical researchers affecting clinical practice (and it takes a while to get to this point…) you are accountable for results you produce as they will affect people’s lives.  But as long as you’re aware of this and the responsibilities that come with it (J), employment of medical scientists is expected to increase at the rapid rate of 36% between 2010 and 2020, according to the bureau of labor statistics – well above the national averages for other professions!   So get cracking at working your research collaborations and innovating with your engineering skills!  Capitalize on all the in-kind support you can receive from the Pittsburgh medical community to actually make a difference in the science and rest assured, good work will not go unnoticed.  Finally, keep innovating and keep publishing!