Ram Sasisekharan

Ram Sasisekharan (born 1965 ) is an Indian-American researcher and bioengineer the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Best known for leading the international team that identified oversulfated chondroitin sulfate as a contaminant in the US heparin supply in 2007 and 2008, he had developed antibodies for dengue, yellow fever, Zika and SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Sasisekharan joined the MIT's faculty of biological engineering in 1996, became full professor in 2003, and Director of the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology from 2008 to 2012. Since then, he is the Alfred H. Caspary Professor of Biological Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology at the MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is also a principal investigator of the Infectious Diseases Interdisciplinary Research Group under the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

Sasisekharan's research in glycomics and antibodies, with authorship of about 200 scientific papers, led him found six biotechnological companies for which he is a named inventor on 205 United States patent applications in 2023. His PhD research, supervised by Robert S. Langer, on cloning and sequencing of the enzyme, heparinase, led to the creation of his first biotechnological company, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, which was later acquired by Johnson & Johnson. Provided by Wikipedia