Long before nanotechnology became a buzzword, Dr Anita Goel had become fascinated by things tiny - the proteins that inch their way along the DNA, reading and copying the genes inside every cell. By her own admission the Massachusetts-born daughter of an Indian-American doctor held almost an equal interest in physics and mathematics as well as in medicine and biology.
"I wanted to combine physics and medicine in a hardcore scientific way," the 34-year-old said of her childhood ambition. Today, in many ways the Harvard/MIT trained physicist and physician, has seemingly been able to achieve her ambition, which, in turn, has opened new vistas and exciting possibilities in biophysics and nanobiotechnology.
Dr Goel, at 34, was featured as the world's top 35 scie- nce and technology innovators by MIT's prestigious Technology Review Magazine. She received the Global Indus Technovator Award from MIT that recognizes the contributions of the top 10 leaders working at the forefront of science, technology and entrepreneurship. She is also an entrepreneur. Founder, chairman and CEO of Nanobiosym, that she founded in 2004 to develop technologies that integrate advances in physics, biomedicine and nanotechnology, she has received several rounds of federal funding awards for her research and recently won a $2 million contract from the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
This year she also signed a deal with the government of Himachal Pradesh to develop a state-of-the-art nano-biotechnology park in the district of Solan. The total outlay for the venture, which has support from the Indian government as well, is likely to exceed $500 million and will be dedicated to research, development, manufacturing and distribution of nanotechnology-based and other biotechnology innovations in the areas of medical diagnostics, life sciences, and nanomedical health care. Excerpts from an interview with Senior Editor Suman Guha Mozumder.
I believe that you fell in love with things small and tiny at a young age, much before nanotechnology became a well-known subject among academics. What really inspired you to begin the journey?
It actually goes back to my childhood in a rural town in Mississippi where my dad was the local town surgeon and where I had lived from the age of three. I was interested in physics and mathematics on the one hand and biology and medicine on the other.
My dad being a doctor exposed me to medicine early in life. It so happened that as I went deeper into physics and math on the one hand and biology and medicine on the other, I noticed that they were seemingly orthogonal pursuits, at least to the Western mindset. At an early age, I was exposed to Eastern philosophy like the Bhagvad Gita and the Vedas. The ancient concepts embodied there made a deep impression on me; they suggested an underlying unity in nature. The philosophical belief that there must an underlying unity in nature led me to want to combine physics and medicine in a hardcore scientific way.
Thus began my quest. When I went to Stanford and majored in physics, it was just becoming possible with rigorous concepts and new tools emerging from physics to use light to manipulate matter and probe the physics of DNA molecules at the level of single molecules.
Text: Suman Guha Mozumder in New York
Also read: 'Nanotech holds key to the future' 
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