Why Research Wednesday: Adi Pucha

Adi Pucha is a third-year Biology major on the Pre-Med track hoping to pursue an MD/PhD after graduation. He works at the Patel Lab in the Atlanta VA Medical Center and Emory MSK Institute, researching the repair and regeneration of musculoskeletal soft tissues with biomaterial therapeutic approaches. His main project investigates the optimization of fiber-reinforced scaffolds for aligned tissue replacement through analysis of cell-biomaterial interactions at the micro-scale. He hopes to understand how cell-instructive biomaterials influence cellular cues in this early microenvironment to lead to the eventual deposition of organized and aligned tissue for the replacement of the meniscus.

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Adi first gained experience in research in high school when he worked with a professor in the Emory Department of Endocrinology, participating in research relating the gut microbiome to bone health. Throughout high school, Adi participated in science fairs up to the international level and reached out to several professors in the Emory School of Medicine to continue his research each year. Before coming to Emory, he reached out to his current Mentor to work in the Department of Orthopaedics, starting in the fall of his first year. Since his childhood, Adi has had a passion for sports, primarily basketball. Through the process of watching his favorite athletes get injured and researching their musculoskeletal injuries, he developed an interest in sports medicine and the treatment of tissues like the ACL and meniscus. Adi’s current research project combines his love for engineering design with his interest in biology, where he can apply basic biology principles to translational biomedical engineering research. His project allows him to be at the intersection of innovation in the lab and tangible therapeutic approaches in the clinic. 

For Adi, research has had an enormous impact on his growth as a student and as a person in general. Through his current research position in the Patel Lab, he has immersed himself in biomedical engineering, in which he has future career goals. Being involved in several research projects has allowed him to refine his organizational and time-management skills while building upon his abilities to collaborate and work with others. He sees himself working primarily in research in the future, and his current experiences have helped to prepare him for these goals. Adi hopes to finish his current project and submit it to a journal for publication in the next few weeks.

His current project focuses on simulating the fiber-reinforced scaffold environment, but Adi aims to eventually construct fully functional composite scaffolds for meniscus replacement using a 3D bioprinter in the next few months. In the long term, he hopes to apply his research tangibly in the clinic for meniscus replacement. After graduating, Adi wants to pursue an MD/PhD concentrating in biomedical engineering and work as a physician-scientist aiming to construct and implement cell-instructive biomaterial strategies for tissue repair in the clinic.