Meet a Roadrunner: Teja Guda ’08 is a biomedical engineer on the cutting edge
Teja Guda at work in a UTSA laboratory.
Teja Guda at work in a UTSA laboratory.
Share this Story(Aug. 21, 2015) — Meet Teja Guda ’08. This UTSA alumnus and biomedical engineering assistant professor is working on the cutting edge of tissue research, work that by his own admission could be called “very sci-fi.”
“We’re developing materials for regenerative medicine,” he said.
People are injured in car accidents, or even in combat, every day and suffer tissue damage. However, there are several different types of tissues at damage sites, which makes it a challenge to repair an injury effectively. Guda is researching alternatives to amputation and has already developed a material out of speaker foam to help grow new bones.
“If you came into an operating room and said, ‘We can solve this using tissue engineering,’ you’d get laughed out of the room because it’s so complex,” he said. “I can see, down the road, being able to offer people a very viable alternative to amputation.”
Guda spent most of his life in Bombay, India. He moved straight to San Antonio to pursue his Ph.D. at UTSA and has been at the university on and off for the past 12 years.
“I grew up in a really, really big city and I wanted to move to San Antonio for a slightly slower pace of life,” he said.
Guda was inspired to come to UTSA after hearing a talk by C. Mauli Agrawal, Peter Flawn Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Vice President of Research, about the UTSA’s biomedical Ph.D. program. Guda moved to the U.S. and became one of UTSA’s first biomedical engineering students.
He joined the faculty in 2014 at the start of UTSA’s GoldStar Initiative. The program aims to further advance UTSA to Tier One status by recruiting more top-tier researchers to the university's world-class faculty.
Guda attended the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India’s premiere institution for engineering.
“It’s a very rigid system of education,” he said. “I really wanted to explore. UTSA allowed to me to explore a lot of biomedical engineering and allowed me to focus on what I wanted to work on. The College of Engineering let me branch out and come into my own on the research side.”
Guda is a mechanical engineer by training, and confesses he’s still wired that way, looking at the human body as a machine. Tissue engineering fascinated him, he said, because it’s on the cutting edge of research, but also because it allowed him to explore more how the machine works.
“San Antonio felt like the old west and I had that pioneering spirit,” Guda said. “But the biggest determinant for focusing on tissue engineering was knowing that it was going to affect someone’s quality of life and that’s what keeps it exciting on a daily basis.”
He goes back to India to visit every few years, but during a trip there this summer he was invited back to his alma mater to talk about his work.
“I never, ever thought that would happen,” he said. “They gave me an honorary check, and I’ll never cash it because it’s already framed on my parents’ wall.”
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This event will acknowledge graduating seniors from the McNair Scholars program at UTSA before inducting the new cohort of scholars into the program.
North Paseo Building (NPB 5.140), Main CampusAt this memorable celebration, UTSA graduates will be introduced one-by-one to cross the stage and accept their doctoral degrees.
Arts Building Recital Hall, Main CampusRoadrunner Walk is an event for graduating students to have a memorable walk on campus to celebrate an important milestone and their achievements. Graduates will walk along the Paseo while being celebrated by the UTSA community, friends, and family members.
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Alamodome, 100 Montana St.Celebrate the accomplishments of Alvarez College of Business, College of Liberal and Fine Arts and Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design.
Alamodome, 100 Montana St.
