Swetha Kannan is a successful junior scientist, educator, and social entrepreneur currently pursuing her PhD in medicine at the University of Cambridge. In her time in Cambridge thus far (MPhil (2021/22)-present), Swetha has made significant contributions to the student, local and global community through her involvement with Make A Smile Cambridge, StudentMinds Cambridge, The Cambridge Development Initiative alongside weekly volunteering at hospices and child-care homes. As a result of these efforts, Swetha received several awards from the university ranging from the Martlet Award (St Edmunds College, MPhil) to the Trinity Hall Volunteering Award (PhD).
Coping with chronic illness and having lost family and friends to inequitable healthcare in India, she became determined to dedicate her life to service by combining her passion for science with her drive for social entrepreneurship. Her life took an important new direction at the age of 18, when she had to serve as primary caregiver to her grandmother following a cancer diagnosis. Her experiences led her to establish the Lalitha Foundation in Bangalore in 2019. The foundation, named after her grandmother, is dedicated to the psychological wellbeing of caregivers and patients with chronic illnesses such as cancer.
It has enabled several thousand patients to improve their overall quality of life, raising money to mobilize services to rural areas and providing free psychological treatment to marginalized communities. The foundation has now expanded its services to several cities, towns and rural districts in India and has been approached for collaboration by healthcare organizations in the UK and Africa. Swetha is currently also leading India’s first structured immunology education and research initiative aimed at students/early career scientists in biosciences/medicine which has been extensively featured by the media.
Swetha’s commitment to scientific entrepreneurship, education for social good has led her to receive several prestigious honors from the University of Cambridge, the most recent being the Lee-Yung Family Fund for Enterpreneurship from Trinity Hall recognising her pioneering efforts to make cancer awareness, detection and care equitable global rights/resources. Her innovation was judged as the one showing most promise, leading to Swetha being named winner of the Trinity Hall entrepreneurship competition held for awardees of a preliminary grant as part of the Lee-Yung Fund. Swetha was also elected as an Access to Healthcare Scholar/Fellow at the renowned Clinton Global Initiative in 2019, named a ‘Leader of Tomorrow’ by Global Biotech Revolution and chosen as a winner of their ‘Voices of Tomorrow’ social impact competition at GapSummit’22 (Cambridge). In June 2023, Swetha was named as one of the three winners of Falling Walls Lab Cambridge for ‘breaking the inequitable wall of cancer care’ through her pioneering innovations (in collaboration with clinicians in India) to develop equitable/accessible precision cancer diagnostics and therapeutics in LMICs.
Swetha’s successes in science and social entrepreneurship have been featured by several prestigious local and global news channels (https://linktr.ee/swetha__kannan). In light of her achievements, Swetha was also shortlisted by Cofinitive one of the Top 21 people, companies and inventions in Cambridge/East England. As a feather to her crown, Swetha was honored with the most prestigious accolade a young person can receive for their humanitarian work, The Diana Award, and received the opportunity to share/discuss her humanitarian work on several global platforms. This includes her selection as a
delegate/speaker at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women 2024 to discuss her improvements to women’s health rights in LMICs such as India. Her vision to make the world a kinder and more equitable place, coupled with her passion for scientific research-driven healthcare has led her to recently develop a novel chemotherapeutic nanoparticle formulation-based pill for patients with cancer (which can be self-administered at home) which will soon be released in rural India where common cancer treatments are severely constrained by the availability of hospital beds/intravenous ports for drug delivery. Alongside this, she is pioneering the development of the first portable Quantum Electron-Tunnelling Based Spectroscope for the early detection of cancers in countries like India where a major barrier to cancer care is late detection of cancers due to poor awareness and limited accessibility of quality screening methods. Swetha Kannan is truly one of a kind, and is sure to transform the face of equitable healthcare in India and around the world with her passion for science/medicine, kindness,
resilience and servant-leadership.