Before coming to UChicago, Shreya Ramachandran majored in neurobiology at Stanford and spent a year researching population genetics in Afro-Mexican communities in Mexico through a Fulbright Fellowship. A second-year PhD student in Maanasa Raghavan’s lab, Ramachandran’s thesis is about the gut microbiome in both hunter-gatherer and industrialized populations of humans. Her passion for researching—and teaching—human genetics has only grown since she began her graduate education at UChicago.
Ramachandran was a teaching assistant for BIOS 21306: Human Genetics this past fall, and in Autumn 2020, she will be a teaching assistant for HGEN 47000: Human Genetics. Her experiences with teaching undergraduates have transformed the way she understands her research.
“I hope [my students] discover an appreciation of the evolutionary forces that have shaped the human variation we see today and how much we can learn about the past from data we gather in the present day,” she said. “At the same time, in an era when genetic conclusions are often misinterpreted to justify bigotry, I hope students can learn how to wield their scientific powers wisely, and effectively communicate their science to affirm the inherent value of all humans.”