Sunita Agarwala
Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sunita Agarwala is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and graduated with Highest Distinction from the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. Upon graduation, she also earned minors in chemistry and aerospace studies and commissioned as a 2d Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. She was also selected for the U.S. Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP) to support her medical education.
During college, Sunita became especially interested in strategic leadership through Air Force ROTC and Arnold Air Society & Silver Wings. Within Arnold Air Society, she held leadership positions at the local, regional, and national levels and received four national-level awards recognizing her contributions to the organization. She led the organization’s first Travis Manion Foundation Gold Star Charity Auction, raising over $10,000 in support of Gold Star Families. She later served as commander for the 2025 National Conclave in Atlanta, Georgia, where she led a four-university team in planning the organization’s capstone national leadership event for more than 800 attendees and managed a $300,000 budget.
Outside of military leadership, Sunita worked as an EMT-Basic for Jancare Ambulance Service, pursued coursework and projects in rehabilitation engineering and robotics, and completed a senior capstone focused on wearable sensor technology that received UNC’s 2025 BEAM Applied Creativity Award. She also authored a winning Arnold Air Society scholarship essay on integrating aeromedical evacuation systems within Agile Combat Employment frameworks.
Sunita chose to attend the EnMed program to further explore how medicine and engineering can work together to improve healthcare access in rural and austere environments. As a future Physicianeer, she hopes to apply principles of military and aerospace medicine toward a future where healthcare can be delivered anytime, anywhere, and to anyone, especially in communities and environments where access is limited.
Outside of school, Sunita runs a portrait photography business and recently published her first article in The Snickle, a Catholic youth journal, where she wrote a reflective commentary on the relationship between faith, reason, and medicine.
