Baju Joy, a graduate student with the Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek (NCB) research group at the MIT Media Lab, has won the prestigious Whitaker Health Sciences Fellowship Award.  This award acknowledges his strong academic and research prowess as well as community involvement.

The winner for the Whitaker award is selected through a highly competitive process by the MIT Office of Graduate Education and Baju is one of the only two students across all departments of MIT to win this prestigious award.

Baju joined the NCB group headed by Prof. Deblina Sarkar in 2019 for his master’s degree. He has continued as a PhD student under the mentorship of Prof. Sarkar starting Fall 2022. At the NCB lab, he is building breakthrough technologies for bioelectronic devices which can create a paradigm shift in the biomedical field.

“Baju is truly exceptional not only as a researcher but also as a leader, team player, community member, and above all as a human being. I think it will be extremely rare to find all these amazing qualities that Baju possesses in one single researcher,” says Prof. Sarkar, who nominated Baju for this award. “Indeed, Baju belongs to a league of his own!” 

Baju also received the NCB hero award in 2022 for his outstanding and selfless community services.