Heart of a Doctor in Brain of a Coder — How Dr. Naveena Yanamala is rewiring cardiology with AI/ML
In a rare honor, Indian-born data scientist Dr. Naveena Yanamala earned the highest excellence award from a top-seeded US medical school for unconventional innovation in cardiology! Here’s the astonishing story of the go-getter from Kadapa, whose stint in IIIT Hyderabad leapfrogged her into an enviable international career at the confluence of medicine and data science.
Dr. Naveena Yanamala winning the Inaugural Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award in Clinical Research from Rutgers’ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in April 2025 was the crowning glory of innovation, at the intersection of medicine and AI/ML.
The IIIT Hyderabad alumna who was discovered and mentored by Turing Award Laureate Dr. Raj Reddy, navigates life’s challenges with pizzazz, not defined by the titles that adorn her amazing technicolor dream coat.
She assuages multiple leadership roles as Director of AI/ML Research, Director of the Center for Innovation (RWJUH/RWJMS) and SGE of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) in the USFDA, along with her fundamental research role as Associate Professor of Medicine at Rutgers RWJMS, with the unrelenting optimism of a Karmayogi. As adjunct faculty, she has been instrumental in developing IIITH’s Virtual labs and the CD spectroscopy Lab along with mentoring generations of IIITians.
How the building blocks stacked up
Very early in life, Dr. Naveena’s father recognized her mathematical potential and enrolled her into every analytical exam that he got wind of. She finished her schooling from the local Nirmal English Medium High School and enrolled for pre-medical coaching “in what turned out to be a fly by night operation. I studied intermediate at home, forged my dad’s signature and joined Kadapa’s Sri Venkateswara Degree College (1998 – 2001). My father grudgingly acknowledged that computers and mathematics was the best fit when I topped BCA during undergrad.” Her AIEEE Rank got her into her first choice, the inaugural MSIT program in Machine Learning and Bioinformatics at IIIT Hyderabad, a brainchild of Dr. Raj Reddy.
Praise for IIIT Hyderabad’s nimbleness
While the language barrier was an initial struggle, what changed the tide was IT Workshop by Dr. Vishal Garg and Dr. Uma Garimella. Being the sole student to clear IT workshop in her MSIT class, Dr. Naveena was deputed to help her classmates, which became the ice-breaker.
“I am a STEMinist, thanks to IIIT Hyderabad’s strong foundation and the opportunities provided by my mentor Dr. Abhijit Mitra of CCNSB, with whom I developed an integrated platform for computer simulation of biological systems for use in drug design and discovery. Introduced to structural biology at Sowdhamini’s TIFR Lab, the analogies between engineering systems and biological systems clicked for me and I realized that one could exploit the other”, explains IIITH’s Dean’s Scholarship winner.
By the end of first year, Dr. Naveena stood out as the cross-campus MSIT topper. In recognition of her achievements and hard work Dr. Rajeev Sangal and Dr. Abhijit Mitra selected her to attend the Bill Gates e-commerce talk at Shilparamam during his 2002 visit to Hyderabad. Concurrently, she completed an online course in Bioinformatics from National University of Singapore.
When Dr. Raj Reddy’s team visited IIIT Hyderabad, the algorithm that Dr. Naveena was developing for ICRISAT under the guidance of Dr. Mitra and Dr. Jayashree Balaji caught his attention and she was invited to complete her master’s at CMU as a Research Scholar. Ten days later, Dr. Naveena was at Carnegie Mellon and the rest is history.
Serendipity and life on auto-pilot
“I never sought things, but grabbed the opportunities presented to me”, mulls Dr. Naveena who joined Carnegie Mellon around the time that Dr. Raj Reddy and Dr. Judith Klein-Seetharaman had received a grant for Biological language modeling. She worked on protein folding, applying NLP methods to predict the structure of proteins, not mappable by X-ray or NMR methods. “My team included Dr. Raj Reddy, Dr. Judith Klein-Seetharaman, and Nobel Laureate Dr. Har Gobind Khorana. After my first publication, Dr. Judith took me on as her Ph. D student at the University Pittsburgh School of Medicine. That is how simply my Ph.D journey started, without me even asking for a scholarship or job”.
In 2004, with a baby on the way, on Drs. Reddy & Judith’s advice, she deferred her Ph.D in Integrative Systems Biology from University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, to work on IIIT Hyderabad’s MSIT curriculum. Her physician-husband Sivaram Somisetty whose family owns a hospital back in Kadapa, “paused his medical career to bring up our son, so that I could continue singing to my heart’s content”, she says gratefully.
After her Ph.D, a chance conversation with a Ph.D student of Dr. Valerian Kagan at a Diwali party would bring a surprising conclusion. “What evolved was a benchtop experiment in nanoparticle research, a publication in Nature and Dr. Kagan calling up Dr. Judith to offer me a second postdoc”. Between 2009 and 2012, Dr. Naveena’s work on novel drugs for HIV, nanomaterial research, radiation damage and nano toxicology, resulting in a record twelve publications in a single year. With a double postdoc in structural biology and in environmental and occupational health, she worked briefly as Principal data scientist at WVU Medicine, West Virginia.
Rooted in the same earth, yet blooming differently—a rose among shrubs
“Before joining the Center for Disease control (CDC), when I was vacillating between other good offers, Dr. Raj Reddy advised me to choose a field where my contributions would be rare and irreplaceable — where I don’t just belong, but stand out,”, smiles Dr. Naveena who continues as adjunct faculty at Dr. Raj Reddy’s Software and Societal Systems Development (S3D) at CMU.
At the CDC, Dr. Naveena started exploring a new field called structural nano toxicology and the kinds of cancers to be expected when nanoparticles enter the body. “A horizontal range of investigations at different points took me into nanotechnology, nano toxicology, drug design and discovery and cardiology, while my vertical remains steadfast in AI/ML methods and its applications”, notes the researcher with the longest tenure at National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (2012 -2020) .
Dr. Naveena’s prodigious body of work has been widely recognized; with the Charles C. Shephard Science Award (2017, 2021) for Outstanding Scientific Paper on original research published by a CDC scientist, Best Scientific Methodology Award in the young investigator category at WVU’s AE-SOT 2017 and Chapter Best Poster Award, Honorable Mention for Alice Hamilton Award for Excellence in Occupational Safety and Health Research (2018,2020,2022), NIH NHLBI Big Data Analysis Challenge (2020) and Best Paper Award for Particle and Fiber Toxicology (2021). During the pandemic, Dr. Reddy and Dr. Naveena devised an affordable wearable watch that could differentiate between influenza and COVID infection.
Data puts rhythm into arrhythmia
“I am an associate professor of medicine, without an MD degree”, smiles Dr. Naveena who strongly believes that her path was manifested four and a half years ago, when her father passed away with stroke and cardiovascular disease complications in Kadapa. “At that point, I was doing bench side research in translational science, beholden to computer science and healthcare. On April 21st 2020, Dr. Partho Sengupta, now the chief of cardiology at RWJ Barnabas Health invited me to be a consultant on a patent he owned. Having a leading cardiologist offer me this unique position was an Ikigai moment and I jumped. Today, we have added four patents and are Co-PIs on several innovative studies”.
When Dr. Sengupta moved to Rutgers as Chief of Cardiology (RWJUH/RWJMS), Dr. Naveena joined as Director of the Innovation center. “Our work in Digital twins has been hugely successful. Imagine a 12-lead ECG at your fingertips with an affordable wearable device that can recreate your echocardiogram and offers the same precision in clinical decisions. How can we standardize accessibility to advanced technologies in health care across zip codes?”, she asks. Her desire to translate innovations into financial jargon for the C-suite in healthcare administration led to a mini MBA in health care management from Rutgers Business School in 2025.
When the Dean of RWJMS informed Dr. Naveena that her colleagues and the awards committee had nominated her for the Inaugural Award for Clinical Research and Innovation, she emphasized that it didn’t matter to them that she didn’t have an MD. The overarching sentiment was that she was eminently qualified!
The Confluencer – Cardiology and data science
A Fellow of the American Society of Echocardiography, Dr. Naveena is a part of the editorial board and is dedicated to making cardiovascular care more accessible and affordable. In 2022, alongside Dr. Partho Sengupta, she and her team developed an AI-driven “ultrasonic biopsy” algorithm that uses pixel-pattern analysis from handheld echocardiograms—compatible even with pocket-sized scanners—to detect early, microscopic changes in heart structure and function. Rutgers is in talks with ultrasound manufacturers and other stakeholders to integrate this algorithm into clinical devices/platforms to enable smarter, more proactive cardiac diagnostics.
New research led by Dr. Naveena has demonstrated that the 3D printed XForce Tourniquet, developed by Auric Innovations, significantly outperformed the industry-standard in application speed and usability. The embedded smart system works like a tie tag, with a speaker and GPS system that connects to 911, conveys bio vitals and predicts blood loss to facilitate effective paramedic response.
“It all comes down to IIIT Hyderabad” observes the author of over 90 peer-reviewed articles. “21 years back, when I wanted to return to India after my Masters’, Dr. Reddy predicted that the future will be AI in healthcare and encouraged me to pursue my Ph.D in medicine”. Dr. Naveena’s research currently focuses on identifying new biomarkers for cardiovascular disease and is exploring the use of digital twins to personalize cardiovascular care, enabling earlier intervention and predictive diagnostics. Beyond research, she serves on multiple advisory boards and has co-founded two health tech startups—one incubated at IIT Madras, focused on AI-driven drug discovery through TurnKey Insights (I) Pvt Ltd, and another in the USA aimed at developing a low-cost fingertip sensor for sleep apnea.
Break you down to build you up
Winning the Rashtrapati Award for Scouts & Guides in high school laid the foundation for Dr. Naveena’s self-belief, nurtured by a childhood filled with science fairs, Bharatanatyam, gymnastics, and her parent’s fearless encouragement. Today, her local leadership and volunteering roles in her diaspora and the weekly Satsang at home is how she keeps her family tethered to their cultural roots. She has coached several robotics teams in West Virginia through NASA Katherine Johnson IV&V Facility. In her free time, she prioritizes family and unwinds with crime and investigative dramas on Netflix, along with a passion for puzzle-solving.
A D grade at CMU became a turning point, with Dr. Raj Reddy mentoring her to think in systems and solve real-world problems through AI/ML. “Everything I am is a Bhiksha, drawn from what he, and so many others have so generously bestowed upon me,” she says with gratitude. Now, driven by her Ikigai, she aspires to give back—especially by championing women in tech from IIIT Hyderabad.
June 2025