Sreekar Mantena

About Sreekar Mantena

Sreekar Mantena is the son of Indian-American immigrants. He was raised in North Carolina, and grew up just as fond of cheese grits as his mom’s chana masala. Every summer of his childhood, he lived with his grandparents in Southern India, who instilled in him the importance of investing in one’s community and a love of learning.

As an undergraduate at Harvard College, Sreekar was inspired by the potential of statistics and data science to address gaps in healthcare delivery. He founded the Global Alliance for Medical Innovation, a nonprofit organization that has partnered with physicians in six countries to develop data-driven medical technologies for underserved communities, including devices to detect corneal disease. He also pursued research in Professor Pardis Sabeti’s lab, where he built new algorithms to design diagnostic assays that improve the detection of infectious pathogens in resource-limited settings. He has co-authored over 20 scientific publications, and his lead-author work has been published in many journals, including Nature Biotechnology, The Lancet Digital Health, and The Journal of Pediatrics.

Sreekar graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with a degree in statistics and molecular biology. He is currently pursuing training through the joint Harvard Medical School-MIT MD/PhD program, where he is a PhD student in biomedical informatics working with Professor Soumya Raychaudhuri. In the future, he hopes to blend compassion with computation as a physician-scientist who harnesses the power of machine learning and statistics to advance equitable healthcare delivery.