Shiva Razavi
“There’s a lot of advice, there is a lot of good advice, but at the end of the day it matters what is really true for you. What really suits your personality the most.”
School of Medicine
Biomedical Engineering, PhD 2018
Postdoctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Shiva‘s Podcast Episode
In this episode, we discuss Shiva’s unconventional path from working in the automotive industry to pursuing her PhD in biomedical engineering, the different ways she has sought out work experiences to gain the skills necessary for her future academic and professional goals, and her advice for staying true to yourself and to your ambitions when it comes to planning for your career.
Learn More About Shiva‘s Story
University of Illinois, a public school with a rigorous engineering education, and Johns Hopkins, a private institution that is medically focused, exposed me to different campus cultures. This helped foster a perspective in cross-disciplinary thinking. At the University of Illinois talking with the engineering faculty, I first learned about the synthetic biology field and how it is possible to engineer with biological modules. That prompted me to reroute my career aspirations and brought me to Johns Hopkins where I trained in biomedical engineering and performed research in an exceptionally collaborative environment. Going back to either of these two campuses is always an emotional experience filled with gratitude and nostalgia.
This is a photo of Dr. Aida Rostami, a 36-year-old physician who gave her life to fulfill her Hippocratic Oath. Iranians have taken to the streets chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom”, demanding a secular democracy. The protestors have been confronted by a brutal crackdown by authorities, many have been injured, imprisoned, or killed. Dr. Rostami was providing medical care for the wounded in Tehran prior to her disappearance. Later, her lifeless body was returned to her family. Aida’s moral conviction that cost her life and her future is heroic and beyond inspiring for me. I hope for her story and her legacy to reverberate at the Johns Hopkins University and all the medical institutions that are committed to the promise of exceptional care in medicine.
