Two faculty members in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering have earned national praise for their impact on education and diversity.

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, or AIMBE, has honored Ajit Yoganathan with its Professional Impact Award for Education and Manu Platt with a Professional Impact Award for Diversity. They were recognized in late March at a virtual awards ceremony alongside five other winners from around the nation.

Yoganathan’s award cites his long record of innovation in development of biomedical engineering education as well as his involvement in developing international standards in cardiovascular devices. In the 1990s, Yoganathan helped create Georgia Tech’s cross-disciplinary bioengineering Ph.D. and then the unique joint Georgia Tech-Emory University Ph.D. program. He also helped develop the Master of Biomedical Innovation and Development.

“I am extremely proud of what we have done in this space, because there was really nothing at Tech in the bio space when I started,” said Yoganathan, Regents Professor Emeritus and Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair in Biomedical Engineering. “The impact I've seen — how it impacts the graduate students that we've developed — and the students’ contributions makes me extremely proud.”

Platt, associate professor in the Department, was honored for “visionary leadership and an established track record of improving diversity and inclusion” in biomedical engineering, according to AIMBE. He was cited for “changing the culture for historically underrepresented students and faculty across the nation.”

Among his work, Platt leads Project ENGAGES at Georgia Tech, a high school science education program that works with seven minority-serving public schools in Atlanta. He also runs a National Institutes of Health-funded initiative at Tech to build a pipeline of future researchers in biomedical engineering and biomedical sciences from groups that are historically underrepresented in the field.