Sangeeta is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES) and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS). She is also the Director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine and a member of the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology – both part of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. Additionally, she is an Affiliated Faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, an Institute Member of the Broad Institute, a Biomedical Engineer at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and a board member of both Brown University and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Trained as both a physician and engineer at Brown, MIT, Harvard, and MGH, Sangeeta leads a laboratory dedicated to leveraging miniaturization tools from the world of semiconductor manufacturing to impact human health. She has pioneered technologies for interfacing living cells with synthetic systems, enabling new applications in tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, medical diagnostics and drug delivery. Her multidisciplinary team has developed a broad and impactful range of inventions, including human micro-livers which model human drug metabolism, liver disease, and interaction with pathogens. Her group also develops nanoparticles and nanoporous materials that can be designed to assemble and communicate inside the body to study, diagnose, and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer. She and her over 150 trainees have contributed to more than 50 issued or pending patents and launched multiple biotechnology companies focused on commercial products at the intersection of medicine and miniaturization. She is currently applying her research to the Wyss Institute’s 3D Organ Engineering initiative.
Sangeeta earned her B.S. at Brown University, followed by an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and an M.D. at Harvard Medical School. Prior to her current appointment at MIT, Sangeeta held a tenured position at UCSD, and has worked in industry at Pfizer, Genetics Institute, ICI Pharmaceuticals, and Organogenesis.