BME Student Honored with Georgia Tech’s Helen Grenga Award

Sriya Surapaneni, an undergraduate in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, leaves Tech as the recipient of one of the Institute's highest awards, the Helen Grenga award.

Named after Tech’s first full-tenured female engineering professor, the award recognizes a graduating woman in engineering who exemplifies outstanding leadership, inclusivity, and academic excellence. For Sriya, the recognition is not just an achievement but also deeply personal.

“As a first-year [student], I went to the banquet where this award was presented and saw someone win it. I remember thinking, ‘Maybe one day that could be me.’ But I didn’t really believe it,” she said. “When I got the email, I was shocked. I still haven’t fully processed it.”

For Sriya, her mother’s story has shaped her drive and determination, especially as a woman in engineering. A mechanical engineer who was the only woman in a class of 89, her mother’s stories of stolen ideas, passed-over recognition, and resilience inspired her own commitment to succeed and help other women do the same in STEM.

“She’s the reason I wanted to do this,” Sriya said. “She made it to the top of a mountain, and now I want to make that mountain taller for the people coming after us.”

That’s certainly been the case the last four years for Sriya, who has tried to make things better for women in engineering, for BME students navigating tough courses, and for first-years finding their way. 

As a leader in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), she helped foster an open, welcoming space where new students could find mentors and feel like they belonged. In student government and the BME Advisory Board, she advocated for more equitable academic policies, from refining student feedback tools to reducing the BME credit hour requirement. 

The Helen Grenga Award is meant to honor students like her — those who lead, advocate, and excel. 

“Sometimes it’s just about making students feel like their voices matter,” she said. “Even if it’s just saying, ‘That exam was unfair, what can we do about it?’”

Sriya’s commitment to engineering didn’t stop at community-building. Her interest in research led her to Prof. Ankur Singh’s lab, where she focused on integrating artificial intelligence into immunoengineering, applying machine learning tools to improve predictive modeling of immune responses.  

“From the first week in the lab, Sriya impressed me with her enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity,” Singh said. “She dove into complex bioengineering concepts with remarkable focus, constantly asking thoughtful questions that pushed our research forward.”

And she didn’t just join existing research work; she shaped new directions. 

“Sriya brought a unique and forward-thinking approach by integrating her interest in artificial intelligence into our immunoengineering research,” Singh added. “It was a direction no one else in the lab had explored, let alone an undergraduate.”

Beyond the lab, Sriya has interned at Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson, collaborated with her capstone team — the “GI Janes” — to design a stool analysis kit that screens for common gastrointestinal issues, including IBD (Irritable Bowel Disease) and even recorded an album with her a cappella group along the way.

This fall, she will pursue a master’s in biomedical informatics at Harvard University.