LaCrosse Tribune
July 25, 2012
Ankit Agarwal is a two-time finalist in the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest and a biochemical engineer whose work promises to help doctors treat patients with slow-to-heal skin wounds. He even has started a Madison-based company, Imbed Biosciences, to commercialize his discoveries.
Too bad Wisconsin — and the United States — nearly lost him over a protracted and largely senseless immigration problem.
Agarwal, a native of India, was a post-doctoral researcher at the UW-Madison when he developed a way to use silver nanoparticles to dramatically cut infection rates in skin wounds. His struggle to obtain a specialized visa was featured in a June 2012 report by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan group that is sounding the alarm about immigration laws that prevent the best and brightest foreign-born students from staying in the United States.
