The Center for Global Women's Health Technologies
Engineering Innovation for Women's Health
The Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies (GWHT) designs, validates, and deploys technologies that improve the prevention, detection, and treatment of women’s cancers worldwide.
GWHT was founded to address one of the most persistent challenges in biomedical innovation: the gap between discovery and real-world healthcare impact. While academic research produces groundbreaking technologies, many innovations never reach the patients who need them most.
GWHT closes this gap by integrating engineering innovation, clinical collaboration, global health implementation, and translational workforce development into a single ecosystem that accelerates the path from discovery to patient impact.
Community health needs inspire new research questions, and engineers develop technologies to address these challenges. These technologies are validated in clinical environments and deployed through partnerships with healthcare providers and global health organizations.
Students and fellows participate throughout this process, expanding the center’s capacity to translate innovation into healthcare impact.
These technologies support the entire cancer care continuum, including access to screening, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring.
Director Ramanujam Elected to National Academy of Engineering Class of 2026!
On February 10, 2026 GWHT Director Nimmi Ramanujam was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Class of 2026 for "creating technologies to improve women's health, including better detection of cervical cancer and improved breast cancer treatment.”
Election to the NAE is among the highest honors and professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Dr. Ramanujam is one of 130 new members and 28 new international members to the organization. Since its inception in 1964, the Academy has elected 2,534 U.S. members along with 356 international members.
GWHT TEXTBOOK
Director Nimmi Ramanujam and Assistant Director Brian Crouch have recently published a textbook with Cambridge University Press, Biomedical Engineering for Global Health: Cancer, Inequity, and Technology. The book examines the role of medical technologies in the evolution of healthcare over the last century and how it has simultaneously shaped modern cancer care and exacerbated health disparities. This book calls for the creation of disruptive technologies based on molecular medicine, imaging, and minimally invasive treatment to address critical health care gaps. Additionally, Biomedical Engineering for Global Health covers the design of clinical trials and instructs students on data analytics and telemedicine with the goal of bringing expertise to point of care providers with limited clinical expertise.
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