MEENAKASHI GUPTA is Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai (NYEE).
Meenakashi was born in 1981 in Albany, New York, to parents who emigrated from India.They are now naturalized citizens and reside in Slingerlands, New York.
Meenakashi received her MD from Harvard Medical School and her BA in biology, magna cum laude from Harvard University. She was a recipient of an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, a John Harvard Scholarship and a Harvard Medical School Office of Enrichment Programs Research Grant.
As a summer intern in the Department of Neurosurgery at Boston Children's Hospital, she studied the treatment of spinal cord injury with neural stem cells. Her undergraduate research in the Department of Neurobiology at the Harvard Medical School focused on identifying genes involved in the hearing process. As a high school student, working in a laboratory at the New York State Department of Health, she conducted DNA analysis for mutations causing Lou Gehrig's disease.
Meenakashi founded and directed Chef it Up! to combat and prevent obesity and founded the Voices Enrichment Program, a youth empowerment program that fosters civic engagement in children.
Meenakashi plans a career as a physician scientist with special interest in such neurological disorders as Lou Gehrig's disease.
