Manu Platt

"Danger of Waiting for 'Perfect Time' to Promote Diversity and Inclusion." Lecture presented to the University of Arkansas, Biomedical Engineering Seminar, September 13, 2018.

Platt is the founding director of Engaging New Generations at Georgia Tech through Engineering and Science (ENGAGES), a biotechnology and engineering research scheme for African American high school students. He delivered the 2017 Biomedical Engineering Society lecture, where he spoke about being from an underrepresented group in science, “Often, if you are the first or the only of a particular demographic category, the path is neither well paved, nor well lit,”. He remarked that scientists can feel like they are waiting for the “perfect time,” to be impactful in promoting diversity and inclusion. In 2019 he was selected as a Keystone Symposia Fellow. In response to the George Floyd protests, universities released statements that called out racism within their research institutions. Platt wrote a perspective piece for Nature Reviews Materials on racism within academia, in which he wrote, “It is said that science is a meritocracy; however, that only holds true if Black professors’ existence is accepted,”.

In 2009 Platt was appointed to the faculty of the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech, where he investigates the proteolytic mechanisms of disease, with a focus on conditions that impact Black communities. He has concentrated on reducing the occurrence of stroke in patients with sickle cell disease.

Manu Omar Platt (born 1980) is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. He serves as Diversity Director of the Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems.