Focusing on Quality

Breast cancer, chronic kidney disease. diabetes, and sepsis. Those are just some of the potentially life-threatening conditions and diseases diagnosed by Siemens Healthineers equipment. As the company's quality systems manager, Kanika Changela (MBP '07) is responsible for making sure that life-changing equipment works as it should.

To do that, Changela relies on lessons learned in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Biotechnology Program (MBP). 

Changela recently returned to campus as a panelist at Biotech Nexus, an annual discussion and networking event hosted by MBP.  

“What I liked about MBP is it brought a research piece and there were classes in different parts of different fields,” she said. “I liked the broadness of it and thought it would give me a better idea of what I really wanted to do.”  

Changela realized during her time in MBP that she wanted to focus her career on quality control. She started at GE Healthcare shortly after graduation and rose to be lead quality engineer, quality leader, and site quality assurance leader over the course of nine years with the company.  

In 2017, she joined Siemens Healthineers, which spun off from parent company Siemens that same year. Changela joined the company as a quality engineer and was promoted to her current position one-and-a-half years later.  

Changela’s role is to ensure products vital to diagnosing complicated and potentially fatal diseases are accurate beyond measure. Her work is mainly on the company’s positron emissions tomography (PET) products.  

“I really enjoy seeing the new stuff that comes out with our products,” Changela said. “I really like saying, ‘OK, we're starting off with a new product. What are the quality improvements that we need to make from a usability design perspective? How can we get better?’”  

Facing a challenge and identifying a solution was one of the skills Changela honed in MBP. That was a message she shared with Biotech Nexus attendees. 

“When I look back at the MBP experience, a lot of it was problem solving, and I think that is key,” she said. “Being able to figure out how to solve a problem and what resources you need to ask for to be able to solve that problem was very helpful. That experience really carries over to my current role because a lot of what I do is explain things to an FDA inspector or an external auditor, and I need to write it up so it makes sense.” 

Changela was energized to be back on campus and see the growth of MBP since her time in the program. She looks forward to staying involved with MBP — and seeing how its students and faculty continue to move it forward. 

“It’s nice to come back to school,” she said. “It's also nice to meet other people in different industries, other alumni, and see what everybody else is doing. It's always fun to hear questions from students that bring me back to where I was almost 20 years ago.”