At just 19 years old, Sakethram Ramakrishnan already speaks with the clarity and conviction of someone who has spent years thinking deeply about the future of medicine. But for the first-year VCU student studying bioinformatics at the VCU School of Life Sciences and Sustainability, that vision began with something deeply personal: watching his grandfather live with Alzheimer’s disease.

“I remember being maybe 6 or 7 years old,” Ramakrishnan said. “I would act as the doctor and help feed him his pills. I had this little plastic stethoscope, and I’d say, “Everything is fine.”

His grandfather later passed away from genetically inherited Alzheimer’s disease, the same condition that had affected previous generations in his family. The experience sparked an early fascination with genetics, inherited disease, and the possibility of using science to help people facing seemingly incurable diagnoses.

As he learned more about medicine, Ramakrishnan became interested not only in developing new treatments but also in making those treatments affordable and accessible to patients who needed them most.

Today, that curiosity has evolved into a passion for bioinformatics, computational genetics, and the intersection of medicine and public policy. Alongside his studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, Ramakrishnan works with Argonne National Laboratory as a computational geneticist, using large-scale data analysis to understand genomes and genetic disease better.

“I had learned quite a bit of coding and was able to talk to computers very fluently,” he said. “Then it became, ‘How do I combine this skill with computers and my interest in genetics?’ That’s what led me to bioinformatics.”

But science alone is not what drives him.

Growing up between the United States and his family’s hometown in India shaped Ramakrishnan's thinking about healthcare access and the role policy plays in determining who benefits from medical innovation. He recalls one visit to his family's rural community in India, where he couldn’t find a physician in his village after he developed a painful eye irritation. The experience left a lasting impression on him, demonstrating how access to healthcare often depends as much on access as it does on medical knowledge.    

Later, living in Georgia, a state that faces many of the same rural healthcare challenges, reinforced those concerns. Ramakrishnan began noticing striking parallels between the barriers he had observed in rural India and those his friends faced in underserved communities. Ramakrishnan began working with local legislators to help expand telemedicine services into underserved communities.

“Seeing how things that seem quite simple and rudimentary have such a grand impact on populations made me realize that there are so many things we can do,” he said. His experiences in both rural India and rural Georgia convinced him that scientific discovery alone is not enough to improve healthcare outcomes. “Research becomes useless if it doesn’t reach the people who need it the most.”

That philosophy now influences nearly every aspect of his work. For Ramakrishnan, scientific innovation and healthcare policy are not separate interests but complementary tools. He believes research can help create more effective treatments, while policy determines whether those treatments become available to everyone.

As a student at VCU, Ramakrishnan said Richmond’s location as the state capital has given him opportunities to explore the connection between science and policy further while also pursuing research experiences aligned with his interests. He joined a lab at the VCU School of Medicine’s Liver Institute and credits VCU faculty and classmates for helping foster a supportive academic environment.

“VCU has a tremendous amount of resources available for students who want to conduct research,” he said. “And the professors genuinely want to help students grow. That’s something you don’t always see at larger schools.”

Ramakrishnan recently expanded those interests through a project submitted for the Bertolino Impact Scholarship Award, where he explored the future of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and regulatory policy in medicine. His project examined how rapidly advancing technologies such as CRISPR gene editing could outpace existing legal and ethical frameworks, particularly following the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Chevron doctrine, which historically gave federal agencies broad authority to interpret regulations.

He became especially interested in questions surrounding genetic engineering after following breakthroughs in CRISPR-based treatments for inherited diseases.

“If every five years we move a little further toward less regulation and more access to this science, what is the future going to look like?” he said. “Can the legal system keep up with this increase in technology? And if it can’t, how could genome editing be used for good, or bad?”

Even while discussing complex topics like biotechnology policy and medical regulation, Ramakrishnan continually returns to the importance of equity and accessibility. He volunteers at a low-income clinic in Richmond as a bilingual clinical volunteer and works to improve healthcare access for underserved communities, including Hispanic patients facing language barriers in medical settings.

“It’s very easy for there to be discrepancies within the patient-provider relationship based on language alone,” he said. “And that’s just one factor out of so many that influence how technologies are received by communities.”

Looking ahead, Ramakrishnan hopes to pursue either an MD-Ph.D. or MD-JD degree, combining medicine with research, technology, and policy work to help create practical healthcare solutions.

“I don’t want to just be a physician,” he said. “I want to identify problems within patient populations, develop technologies and solutions for them, and then help ensure those solutions are low-cost, scalable, and accessible to the people who need them most. There are millions of innovations on the shelf that have not gotten into people’s hands.”    

Despite an already impressive resume, Ramakrishnan says one of the most important lessons he has learned so far is understanding purpose.

“It is imperative to deeply understand your ‘why,’” he said. “When you understand why you’re doing something, you can identify the opportunities that are truly meaningful to you.”    

He also believes leadership shouldn’t be defined by titles but rather by the ability to help others succeed.

“Too often, we associate leadership with a label,” he said. “For me, leadership is about making the people around you feel safe and welcomed.”

For Ramakrishnan, those values are rooted in both community and faith. Drawing on the Hindu concept of Dharma, the idea of fulfilling one’s duty, he sees his work as a way to give back to people facing challenges similar to those his own family once faced.

“I know with certainty that the work I do will have a measurable impact within my community,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s about creating solutions to problems that once seemed unsolvable and making sure they actually help the people who need them.”