"My name is Joel Paul Ramesh Balka­ran, and I grew up in Todd’s Road, cen­tral Trinidad. I have one old­er sis­ter who is in her fi­nal year of med­ical school at UWI. My mum is a pri­ma­ry school teacher, while my dad used to teach ter­tiary lev­el busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion but now runs a farm with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

While I at­tend­ed pri­ma­ry school near­by at Mon­trose Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, for sec­ondary school I went to Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do, pri­mar­i­ly be­cause my par­ents are from south Trinidad and my sis­ter was al­ready at­tend­ing Na­pari­ma Girls. Pres was a huge­ly for­ma­tion­al part of my youth.

My favourite food is my mum’s lasagna, and as a South boy, I love Ma­yaro and have fond mem­o­ries of spend­ing time there dur­ing school hol­i­days when I was young."

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia's OMA­RINE NANAN, this is what the 24-year-old Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate who will be pur­su­ing his PhD at Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty had to say.

You have com­plet­ed a schol­ar­ship at one of the most re­spect­ed ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions in the world, did you ever en­vi­sion your­self there?

I cer­tain­ly did not think that I would have the priv­i­lege of at­tend­ing Har­vard! But I knew from ear­ly in sec­ondary school that I want­ed to get an Open Schol­ar­ship and study in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and I knew that I would shoot as high as pos­si­ble in the hopes that God would help me find favour.

What guid­ed you to­ward bio-med­ical en­gi­neer­ing?

I was al­ways in­ter­est­ed in pur­su­ing a ca­reer in the med­ical field be­cause I want to have the abil­i­ty to help peo­ple in need, but I al­so had a cu­rios­i­ty for build­ing and de­sign­ing things from young (start­ing with Le­gos of course). Bio­engi­neer­ing al­lowed me to har­ness both of those in­ter­ests to­geth­er to ap­proach med­i­cine with a prob­lem-solv­ing view; the ide­al syn­the­sis for my an­a­lyt­i­cal side and de­sire to be part of the med­ical field, es­pe­cial­ly as I have an aver­sion to blood and pain.

What ex­act­ly is bio-med­ical en­gi­neer­ing?

It’s quite a var­ied field, but in essence, it is meant to be a com­ple­ment to med­i­cine in that it cre­ates tech­nolo­gies that make med­ical treat­ments eas­i­er, more ef­fec­tive, and in some cas­es cre­ates new treat­ments where none ex­ist. For ex­am­ple, all the ma­chines in a hos­pi­tal are de­signed by bio­engi­neers, es­pe­cial­ly those more in­clined to the elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing side of BioE. On the op­po­site side, bio­engi­neers al­so de­sign new pros­thet­ics and re­place­ment or­gans, rang­ing from new heart valves, to an ar­ti­fi­cial pan­creas. The area of BioE that I have fo­cused on is drug de­liv­ery–this is found­ed on the idea that you can have a drug that is in­cred­i­bly ef­fec­tive at treat­ing a dis­ease, but if it can­not get to the tar­get site in the body eas­i­ly, then it is use­less. A com­mon ex­am­ple is in­sulin; it would be eas­i­est to take in­sulin in a pill form, but be­cause the stom­ach di­gests the pro­tein be­fore it can be ab­sorbed in­to the blood, we have to in­ject in­sulin in­stead. Drug de­liv­ery BioE re­search would aim to find a new way of de­liv­er­ing in­sulin with­out need­ing to in­ject mul­ti­ple times a day, whether it is a slow re­lease patch, or a new type of cap­sule that can pro­tect the in­sulin from be­ing di­gest­ed.

This de­scrip­tion cer­tain­ly isn’t com­pre­hen­sive, but it gives you a gen­er­al pic­ture of what BioE hopes to achieve. It does all this through the same prob­lem-solv­ing ap­proach that is found in all en­gi­neer­ing dis­ci­plines.

How were your goals at­tain­able?

My par­ents in­stilled a good work eth­ic in me from young, and a recog­ni­tion that noth­ing good comes with­out hard work.

What was the role of your fam­i­ly in at­tain­ing your aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments? Can that role be un­der­scored enough?

My fam­i­ly’s role has been im­mense, and I would not be any­where close to who I am with­out them. My grand­par­ents’ names are Dar­ling and Paul Balka­ran (on my dad’s side) and Eve­lyn and Sam­lal Ram­lakhan.

What was it like to leave Trinidad for an en­vi­ron­ment that would have been so dif­fer­ent and al­so which did not af­ford you the com­fort of fam­i­ly around?

Pres taught me how to find a fam­i­ly in a new place (I was the on­ly per­son from my school to go to Pres San Fer­nan­do be­cause my pri­ma­ry school was in cen­tral Trinidad), and that def­i­nite­ly equipped me per­fect­ly to find friends who would stick by me. In terms of dif­fer­ent food and cul­ture, I have al­ways felt a deep con­nec­tion to our cul­ture as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and re­lied on that to tide me over in times when I was miles away from home. The friends I made there are some of the clos­est peo­ple I will keep in life go­ing for­ward.

How was your cam­pus life? Did you meet oth­er lo­cals and stu­dents from the Caribbean?

Yes! There was one oth­er Tri­ni who has since left, and now that I am leav­ing there are two more. There are al­so lots of peo­ple who were born in the US but whose par­ents are from the Caribbean. I loved ex­pe­ri­enc­ing new things through cam­pus life, like do­ing ball­room danc­ing for the first time.

What did that ex­pe­ri­ence teach you to ap­pre­ci­ate about Trinidad?

The close­ness of our so­ci­ety and peo­ple. There is a unique­ness to how we bond to­geth­er as Tri­nis, and I am glad I was able to take that with me to Har­vard.

What did it show you that we can do bet­ter?

I think some­times we tend to cov­er our emo­tions with lay­ers of cal­lous­ness; es­pe­cial­ly among men in T&T where a ‘ma­cho’ cul­ture is preva­lent. I would love to see us hav­ing those dif­fi­cult dis­cus­sions that re­quire us to open up our minds to crit­i­cism and self-re­flec­tion.

You are about to em­bark on your PhD at Ox­ford, an­oth­er gold stan­dard ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion, does some­one who has come as far as you have still have anx­i­eties and fears about en­ter­ing a new en­vi­ron­ment, at that lev­el?

It is still quite a new place, a new coun­try, and a new group of peo­ple I will be sur­round­ed with. Hav­ing been abroad for four years al­ready, I feel much more com­fort­able ad­just­ing to the new en­vi­ron­ment than I did when go­ing to Har­vard in 2016, but every new ex­pe­ri­ence is dif­fi­cult.

Is there a place and a per­son in Trinidad or any­where that great­ly in­flu­enced your phi­los­o­phy and how you live?

Cer­tain­ly, my time at Pres was great­ly in­flu­en­tial in my phi­los­o­phy and world­view; from the fan­tas­tic teach­ers who went out of their way to help us learn, to my friends who be­came broth­ers, Pres gave me a sec­ond fam­i­ly that I could al­ways count on. That ex­pe­ri­ence taught me that so long as I loved and cared for those around me, I would al­ways find friends who would have my back–some­thing that helped my ad­just­ment to Har­vard tremen­dous­ly.

Out­side of aca­d­e­mics, what are your in­ter­ests and hob­bies?

I am an avid sports fan and can be­come en­grossed in any sport giv­en the chance! I love watch­ing crick­et, foot­ball, ten­nis, squash, and I have even picked up a bit of the Amer­i­can sports dur­ing my time there (al­though their foot­ball still isn’t re­al foot­ball). I al­so en­joy play­ing mu­sic and have been play­ing the pi­ano for the past 20-odd years both clas­si­cal­ly and in church. I al­so play the gui­tar ca­su­al­ly at home. I love a good game of scrab­ble and en­joy build­ing puz­zles and read­ing.