As an undergraduate, Ramanujan (Manu) Hegde studied biology at the University of Chicago with the thought that he would become a doctor. His summers and spare time were spent working in a lab, where he came to love the problem-solving of basic research. Hegde then fled Chicago winters for the sunshine of The University of California, San Francisco, where he completed an MD-PhD combined degree program. By then, he had decided to pursue basic research as a career, and moved to the National Institutes of Health where he was an investigator for 11 years. In 2011, Hegde moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where his research focuses on the mechanisms of protein biosynthesis and quality control.
Hegde’s research contributions have been recognized with his election as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2013 and as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016.
