Bharath Heggadahalli, class of 2020, reflects on his time at Mass Academy and how it shaped his future.
Junior Staff Writer Bhavana Heggadahalli '28
Bharath Heggadahalli, class of 2020, reflects on his time at Mass Academy and how it shaped his future.
Junior Staff Writer Bhavana Heggadahalli '28
Going into Mass Academy, he was gravitating towards the field of mathematics. But he found himself working in the field of Biotechnology, creating a knee brace for ACL tears; even with little experience, he “found the project very interesting and fulfilling and wanted to continue to do projects like this in the future”.
His STEM independent research project guided his choices, as he said: “My MAMS STEM project is what made me interested in the life sciences in the first place”, influencing him to go to Johns Hopkins University for biomedical engineering.
Even with his focus in Biomedical engineering, he still focused on exploring multiple areas, including taking a stop-motion class and a food class. He also found that Johns Hopkins University offered many project-based classes, similar to Mass Academy, which he enjoyed.
After college, Bharath started his job at Clearview in healthcare consulting, finding himself on the more strategic aspect of biomedical engineering. He spends his days having meetings with directors from medical services and pharmaceutical companies to understand what strategic question they are trying to solve. Some examples of these questions could be “what’s the best way to design our clinical trials to reach the most patients?” or “what does the current market look like for a rare disease?” Then, he goes and interviews patients and doctors to research the problem and give a recommendation for the client.
Reflecting on his views of his future during college, he said that “I thought I would be doing more mechanical stuff and be working on medical devices. But I joined some business clubs on campus and realized I liked the strategy side of things but still wanted to stay in the healthcare space.”
He also emphasized that he would have never seen himself in the consulting space as a high schooler, as he did not know much about the field when he was younger.
Bharath found his future career through Mass Academy, even if it is not exactly what he imagined, by exploring different fields, despite having less knowledge in certain fields. He has carried this with him through college and even into his career.
One piece of advice he would give his younger Mass Academy self is to “Take breaks, talk to people around the school, and try to enjoy it as much as you can because these will be people that you stay in touch with for the rest of your life and you’ll make many memories with them”.
Another key piece of advice he would give to all the current Mass Academy students is to “Step out of your comfort zone and try new things. When I started at MAMS, I was primarily interested in math but was unsure what my career held in that space. I had no experience in bio but thought I would try something new. I ended up really liking the biotechnology project I did, and it completely changed what I wanted to do in my career.”