When Bertolino LLP’s Texas professional license defense lawyers debuted the 2025 Impact on Government Scholarship, they hoped applicants would critically engage with recent decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court, exhibiting civil awareness and opinions about the future of the regulatory world.
Sakethram Ramakrishnan’s application blew the team’s expectations out of the water. Ramakrishnan is a Guaranteed Admission BS/MD student set to attend Virginia Commonwealth University.
He intends to major in Bioinformatics, a field that will allow him to utilize computer science and molecular biology to study gene expression.
Ramakrishnan’s approach to questions about the regulatory future and, specifically, the Supreme Court decision to overturn Chevron USA v. National Resources Defense Council speaks to his intensive civic engagement as well as the ethical concerns he has about the field he’s entering. Our team is thrilled to offer him $2,500 to dedicate toward his studies.
Tackling the Chevron Doctrine
The video Ramakrishnan submitted for the scholarship selection committee’s consideration is dense, informative, and visually engaging. It hinges on an understanding of the Chevron Doctrine and its impact on highly regulated fields.
Originally, Chevron USA v. The National Resources Defense Council stated that if Congress was asked to consider a statute that addressed regulations in a certain field and could not do so, specialized agencies had the legal right to implement reasonable opinions relevant to professional conduct in those fields.
United States v. Mead Corp. elaborates on the doctrine, highlighting a quote from it to state that “there is an express delegation of authority to the agency to elucidate a specific provision of the statute by regulation, and any ensuring regulation is binding in the courts unless procedurally defective, arbitrary or capricious in substance, or manifestly contrary to the statute.”
Opinions on the Decision to Overturn Chevron USA v. National Resources Defense Council
In simpler terms, the Chevron Doctrine allowed experts in highly-regulated fields to dictate professional development, product/service implementation, service standards, and other facets of field operations.
As of June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court deemed that the doctrine violated the court’s right to interpret the law and overturned it via Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
In opinions expressed by Chief Justice Roberts, the revocation of the doctrine would allow regulated industries to challenge, overturn, and rewrite operational regulations.
Contesting opinions asserted that by going around experts and putting regulatory responsibility in the hands of justices, protected industries may face significant destabilization and operational dangers.
Imagining a Less Regulated Future
This, then, is the judicial action that Ramakrishnan comments on. He does so by inviting his viewers to imagine the far-off future, entering viewers in medias res to operations in a gene clinic with the line, “Do you want the boosted immune system or just the cognitive upgrade?”
Ramakrishnan then walks viewers through operations at a far-future, hypothetical gene clinic, where patients wishing to be parents would have opportunities to custom-design their children.
Citing the hypothetical Genetic Clarity Act of 2041, Ramakrishnan notes that when lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to regulate gene modification, science moved on without them.
Ramakrishnan argues that when courts tell regulators to set their opinions aside and leave industry oversight to lawmakers, those courts fail to move quickly enough to address scientific developments that may impact people’s everyday lives. “The rules,” he says, referring to his hypothetical future, “were too late,” resulting in unchecked developmental drift.
Using Personal Research to Peer Into the Future
After joining a research lab at Argonne and studying genome mining, Ramakrishnan discovered that “while science accelerates, the policies meant to guide it lag far behind.
This gap isn’t just a bureaucratic delay; it’s a chasm where ethical dilemmas thrive. No recent event has widened this chasm more than the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Chevron deference.
“By shifting interpretive power from subject-matter experts in federal agencies to the courts,” he continues, “the ruling fundamentally altered the law’s ability to keep pace with innovation. In biotechnology, this disconnect is critical. You can’t wait five years for a new rule when CRISPR technology evolves every five months.
“The prospect of judges, not geneticists, shaping the future of biotechnology…drove me to ask: what might gene editing look like in 50 years? If gene-editing technology becomes [common] while the law is still catching up, do we enter an era where parents customize children not because it’s deemed safe or ethical, but…because no one has stopped them?”
Ramakrishnan Constantly Finds Opportunities to Learn and Offer Support
Ramakrishnan’s approach to his 2025 Impact in Government Scholarship video speaks to a great bedrock of knowledge and a willingness to engage with complicated questions of ethical development and regulation.
By his own description, he is equally dedicated in other aspects of his life. Here are just some of his many accomplishments:
- Completed over 300 hours as an intern at Peach Clinic in Suwanee, GA.
- Participated in the highest-level courses in Spanish at the Boston Medical Spanish Center.
- Conducted EKG diagnostics.
- Triaged up to 40 patients per day.
- Worked as a student researcher at Argonne National Lab, presenting work to federal researchers and using 520-node compute clusters to develop and analyze genetic datasets for drug discovery.
- Worked in the ER, ICU, and operating room at SPARSH Hospital in India.
- Redesigned data collection methods for a GERD trial using Python scripts.
- Served (and continues to serve) as the youngest board member with SoChabe Zambia.
- Raised $230,000 to build a rural clinic.
- Created Georgia’s first student-run civic healthcare coalition, working directly with legislators to expand rural telemedicine access through public libraries.
- Ran the Biology Olympiad team at his high school, growing it to become one of the top five largest in the state.
- Coached tennis and captained his high school tennis team.
It is an overwhelming CV for someone so young, but Ramakrishnan insists that there is one binding value that brings all of his work together. His primary goal is always to help people, and based on this history of service, he has.
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What to Expect From Ramakrishnan in the Future
In Ramakrishnan’s own words, he hopes that he can “bridge molecular science and community care—using bioinformatics and mathematics to understand disease at its core while applying demographics and public health to reach diverse populations and push for structural change.” He wants to see that “breakthroughs in medicine aren’t just made, but shared.”
“I want to become a physician who designs new ways to deliver care,” he continues. “I’m
considering an MD/PhD to keep working on AI tools for disease prevention, or an
MD/JD if policy ends up being the better lever. I hope to work in academic medicine, combining patient care with large-scale genetic research and government partnerships.
I want to work with clinics, legislators, and researchers to improve access to those who need it the most. I’m not set on a title. I just want to be the person who hears ‘there’s no good treatment for that yet’—and then goes and builds one.”
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About Bertolino LLP’s 2025 Impact in Government Scholarship
Students who want to apply for next year’s Impact in Government Scholarship can read through the scholarship’s terms and conditions to make sure they qualify for the financial support available through Bertolino LLP.
The scholarship asks students to make a video discussing the question, “How will the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the current makeup of the Supreme Court change what the future regulatory world looks like in 50 years?”
Three Cheers for Sakethram Ramakrishnan!
It is an understatement to say that Ramakrishnan’s intelligence, elocution, and goals for the future have impressed the team at Bertolino LLP. The team is thrilled to offer him $2,500 in financial support to continue pursuing his goal of marrying his study of bioinformatics and mathematics with demographics and public health.
The team has no doubt that Ramakrishnan’s background in and dedication to ethical clinical developments will make it easier for him to advocate for the systemic change he wants to see.
Bertolino LLP wishes him luck as he pursues his BS/MD at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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