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Neel Joshi
- Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering (January 2010)
Core Member, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
Contact Information
| Email: | neel [ DOT ] joshi [ AT ] wyss [ DOT ] harvard [ DOT ] edu |
Education
- Ph.D., Organic Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley
Research Areas
- Applied Physics: Biophysics
- Applied Physics: Materials Science
- Bioengineering: Cell and Tissue Engineering
Research Profile
Neel Joshi works at the interface between synthetic chemistry, biology, and materials science. At the Wyss, he plans to use his research background in protein chemistry and polymeric materials synthesis to develop new methods for controlling the spatial and temporal arrangement of self-assembling systems.
His research program will be focused in two areas – controlling peptide sequence and connectivity to create fibrous structures whose composition can be precisely programmed at the nanometer-size scale, and evolving self-assembling proteins, such as nanocages, so that their assembly state can be controlled by binding to biomolecular stimuli. The new bionanomaterials that result from these efforts will be applied to tackle problems at the forefront of medical imaging, tissue engineering, and drug delivery.
Joshi, who has authored 11 publications and holds two patents, will join the Wyss community of researchers in January of 2010 as an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Joshi completed his postdoctoral research with Prof. Mark Grinstaff at Boston University synthesizing dendrimeric macromolecules for use as scaffolds in cartilage tissue engineering and developing new contrast agents capable of assessing the health of cartilage tissue using computed tomography (CT).
His graduate research in Organic Chemistry was conducted under the guidance of Prof. Matt Francis at UC Berkeley, and focused on developing new tools for site-selective protein modification. While at Berkeley, he developed two innovative chemical transformations that permit the attachment of various functional components to tyrosyl residues on protein surfaces and the N-terminus of proteins. These new modification techniques represent significant achievements in the fields of bioconjugation and protein-based nanomaterials construction, and have resulted in useful strategies to conjugate proteins to fluorescent tracking probes, polymers, and purification tags. He received his B.S. from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Ca.