A unique opportunity to thank a fellow Boilermaker

Student with Type 1 diabetes relishes meeting Purdue alum who leads R&D at the company whose CGM system changed her life

What would you say to someone whose work makes your life better?  

And what would it mean if that person attended the same university you do, knowing that their efforts allow you to live independently? 

When Purdue student Morgan Malaski met Girish Naganathan (MSME ’99), chief technology officer at California-based Dexcom Inc., she was thrilled to have an opportunity to answer those questions. 

“I’m really grateful for that experience,” she says. 

Morgan — diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 6 — doubts she would have been able to leave her home in Portage, Indiana, for college if not for Dexcom’s continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system that she wears each day. 

Without a normally functioning pancreas producing insulin at sufficient levels to reduce the amount of sugar in their bloodstream, people like Morgan with Type 1 diabetes are at risk of developing life-threatening health complications. But thanks to the real-time feedback that Dexcom’s CGM technology provides, Morgan has been able to manage the chronic illness and thrive in her freshman year at Purdue. 

That’s one of the primary reasons that Morgan’s parents, Mindy (BA education ’99) and Matt, were also excited to meet Naganathan. Armed with the real-time feedback the device transmits, Mindy and Matt’s lives also changed for the better once Morgan became a Dexcom user at age 8. 

“Dexcom saves us,” says Mindy, who used to get up every two hours each night to check on Morgan before the FDA approved Dexcom for children’s use. “I could cry. The two years that we lived without Dexcom with her, it was frightening as a mom. I’m sure my cortisol levels were through the roof, just awake all the time, worried about my kid, worried that she wouldn’t wake up. But with the Dexcom, I can sleep and get through the night. It’s amazing technology, and it keeps getting better. We just love them so much.” 

Naganathan, who spearheads Dexcom’s research and development efforts, spent most of his career in the consumer electronics sector, so he was unaccustomed to hearing such passionate customer testimonials before accepting his current position. That changed almost immediately after joining Dexcom, when thank-you notes began rolling in from families like the Malaskis. 

“I had so many friends or colleagues write to me on LinkedIn talking about how it changed their life or how they don’t have to worry because of Dexcom,” Naganathan says. “All the stress of what goes on behind the scenes to make all this happen just fades away when you’re thinking about how the end result of what you’re working on has got this profound impact. 

“It was truly humbling. I realized I’m on a path doing work that really matters at Dexcom.” 

Indeed he is, and Morgan’s story is just one example of the good that can come from exceptional Boilermakers like Naganathan tackling the world’s toughest challenges. Diabetes increasingly fits that description, as approximately 30 million Americans have been diagnosed (Type 1 and Type 2 combined) with this condition that puts them at higher risk of heart disease, stroke and many other complications that can result in premature death. 

A normal life at Purdue

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Dexcom’s CGM technology is that it enables users to do the everyday, average stuff that would have been much more difficult without it. With the sensor attached to her upper arm, Morgan can more easily live 90 minutes away from home and enjoy the lifestyle of a typical college student. 

She’s studying biology and supports the College of Science as a student ambassador. She and her roommate signed up to play intramural soccer. And she joined the Higher Ground Dance Company, which allows her to participate in a favorite activity since childhood. 

She’s able to do all of that with a relatively low degree of stress because she knows her Dexcom CGM system will check her glucose levels every five minutes and alert her if it’s too low or too high. 

“The biggest advantage, and what allows that freedom, is just having that information,” Matt says. “Whether you’re actively looking at it or not, if it’s not where it’s supposed to be, it’s going to beep. Then you know you’re not in the right place. And so just having that information prior to going into a dance session where you know you’re going to be dancing for 45 minutes, an hour straight — ‘If I’m getting low, I should have something to eat before I start this.’ Knowledge is power.” 

“And it’s just nice to have backup in that situation,” Morgan adds. 

This summer, Morgan plans to participate in an internship through the Lilly Scholars at Purdue program in another twist in her story as a Boilermaker with diabetes. The internship at Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Company will give her an opportunity to evaluate a longtime career goal of working in R&D in the pharmaceutical industry. And it will allow her to do so at the company that was the first commercial manufacturer of insulin. 

“That’s like a God wink,” Mindy says of the meaningful connection between the internship program and her family’s journey with the chronic illness Lilly is best known for combating. 

“It will be a full-circle moment,” Morgan agrees. “Since I was little, I knew I wanted to give back to the people who have developed and researched and manufactured things that either make my day-to-day easier or literally keep me alive.” 

There is another notable way that work being done at Purdue might someday make Morgan’s daily routine easier, and it might not seem especially obvious. 

A Dexcom monitor relies on two primary semiconductor devices to operate effectively: the analog front end that deciphers minuscule changes in a person’s blood glucose levels, plus the Bluetooth chipset that transmits the readings to a mobile device. The groundbreaking semiconductor research being done at Purdue could someday help Dexcom engineers create devices that are smaller, more accurate, more comfortable to wear, more feature-packed or that benefit from any number of additional innovations. 

“Semiconductors are critical,” Naganathan says. “Without semiconductors, the system cannot work.”

Since I was little, I knew I wanted to give back to the people who have developed and researched and manufactured things that either make my day-to-day easier or literally keep me alive.

Morgan Malaski

Purdue freshman and Dexcom user

‘You get used to beeps very quickly’ 

Although the Malaskis previously had no family history of diabetes, Morgan is actually not the only person in their household to be diagnosed with the disease. Her 14-year-old brother, Myron, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 10 and also uses a Dexcom CGM today. 

Their parents by now are accustomed to smartphone notifications, either from Morgan’s insulin pump or from the Dexcom Share feature that allows them to view the activity on each child’s glucose monitoring devices. 

“Around our house, you get very used to beeps very quickly,” Mindy says. “It gives us a little insight into what’s happening in that situation so that even now with Morgan being down at Purdue, if we get an alert on our phone, then we can see it and hear it. Because when she beeps, we beep.” 

Morgan began using the insulin pump during high school, thereby introducing another layer of precision to her daily fight against diabetes. The pump syncs with her Dexcom system and can respond autonomously, administering the exact insulin dosage necessary according to the monitor’s readings. 

“That’s another part of Dexcom that was a great next step for us,” Matt says. “We had the knowledge. Now we have something that could be done with it more actively, more precisely than we could do with the normal method of delivery, which was an insulin pen and needles. You have a certain amount of inherent being off when you’re doing it that way because you have to either give (insulin) in a full unit or in a half unit, whereas this gives such small doses that it can do zero-point-whatever that the algorithm determines is necessary to get within the range it’s supposed to be.” 

That range is a constantly moving target, however. 

Morgan is able to occasionally indulge in a sugary dessert or a carb-heavy meal like pizza, but she does so with the knowledge that diabetes never takes a break. While she can take proactive steps to counteract the effects of whatever she consumes, the need for vigilance is ever present. 

That constant battle is why Dexcom frequently refers to its customers as “Dexcom Warriors.” 

“Dexcom is the ammunition for them to truly fight against it,” Naganathan says. “It informs them. It gives them protection. It gives them alerts. It wakes them up. It indicates to them when they’re going to go high or low. And they can go about living their lives without thinking about the disease because there’s a device that’s working on their behalf, thinking about the disease, that’s the most accurate device in the world.” 

We want to support all of our patients. But when you bring it close to home to say it’s enabling somebody to go to the same school that you attended, it removes one more degree of separation and brings that closeness.

Girish Naganathan (MSME ’99) 

Chief technology officer, Dexcom, Inc.

Tough conversations, important tests 

Sending children away for college is a high-stress time for any parent, and that was especially the case for the Malaskis. 

They credit participation in a study at Chicago’s Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital — where their kids were treated for diabetes — for giving them the tools necessary to help Morgan and Myron become more independent. The Malaskis say the Transition Readiness: A Family-Centered Experience (TRACE) study provided space to have tough conversations with their children about being away from home and managing their own medical care. 

“The study provided us more meaningful avenues to have those conversations where it wasn’t adversarial,” Matt says. “It was just ‘Here are our thoughts. What are your thoughts? Where can we come to a consensus of what these next years are going to look like?’” 

One result of those conversations is that Matt and Mindy agreed to wait 15 minutes after receiving a Dexcom notification before reaching out to make sure Morgan addressed the situation. After the 15-minute mark, they are free to repeatedly contact her until they know she has taken corrective steps. 

“It gives them peace of mind that they can see it too,” Morgan says. “If they need to call me, they call me.” 

Sleepaway dance camps at Ball State University each summer also helped settle the Malaskis’ nerves, providing short-term opportunities for Morgan to prove she was ready for the responsibilities of college. 

“That was entrusting Morgan with ‘You want to go away for school, here’s your chance. You know what you need to do. You need to text us. You need to keep us in the loop.’ And she was very good about it. So we did feel confident when she was ready to go away to Purdue,” Mindy says. 

Morgan has always been a responsible kid, so her parents weren’t surprised that she passed another independence test with similar success at Purdue, largely thanks to the Dexcom technology. 

And when she and her family had a chance to meet Naganathan and thank him for the system that changed their lives, they seized the opportunity. 

“It’s really cool to meet one of the people who helps make my life so much easier,” Morgan says. 

Naganathan always enjoys the warm-and-fuzzy feelings that come from hearing about a Dexcom user’s positive experiences. However, he acknowledges that these testimonials seem extra meaningful when they have personal connections — like with a certain Boilermaker who thanks to Dexcom is better prepared to fulfill her potential and live a happier, healthier life. 

“We want to support all of our patients,” Naganathan says. “But when you bring it close to home to say it’s enabling somebody to go to the same school that you attended, it removes one more degree of separation and brings that closeness.”