K.T. Ramesh

So I took on this project of saying, maybe I can develop an experiment that would let me take bacteria and subject it to these really high pressures for very short times, just like a shock, and then measure how much of it survives.

So I wrote a proposal to NASA saying, OK, let me go see if I can do that.

Like a little sandwich with the little cells in the middle.

And then you're going to take this sandwich of metal plates and put it inside a target chamber.

So I have in my lab a giant gun.

And inside that gun, I can launch projectiles at high velocity.

So my sandwich containing my cells is sitting inside the target chamber.

I then close the target chamber, evacuate it, so I take all the atmosphere out, and then I launch my projectile.

My projectile is carrying another metal plate.

So I've got one metal plate hitting a sandwich of metal plates, and the sandwich of metal plates contains the bacteria.

Right, and what that does is sends waves into the metal plates.

And those waves are like shock waves.

And they generate the really high pressures inside the cell.

And that's how we generate the high pressures for the experiment.

Right, so my lab is mostly about impact.

I'm interested in impact problems.

I do work for a bunch of places, all of whom are interested in these impact conditions.

I will never admit to that.

And the name should tell you something, radiodurans.

To me, that says radio, so radiation.