He has established preeminence in science, engineering, medicine, technology and social justice. A master of multiple fields, Dr. Cato T. Laurencin, holds UConn’s highest academic title: University Professor.
Please tell us about yourself and how you got to where you are today.
I work at the interface of medicine and engineering and am also someone that is very much involved in issues of social justice. I grew up in Philadelphia and became interested in medicine at a very early age, and decided I wanted to become a doctor. I started college at Princeton, where I met people who were fantastic mentors in engineering. At that time, I was not quite sure how I was going to combine engineering and medicine, but I pursued chemical engineering.
When I completed college, I went on to medical school at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and partway through I decided to revisit my scientific and engineering routes. I met Robert Langer, who was a young assistant professor at that time and decided to join his laboratory. I subsequently took on a combined MD–Ph.D. program combining work at Harvard with work at MIT. This program was unusual and I realized that to do a comprehensive job on both would take a long, long time!
For the complete article on Professor Cato T. Laurencin visit: UConn Today
Article first appeared on UConn Today, March 26th, 2021
