The community of multidisciplinary researchers at the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience has grown by three with the addition of new faculty members James Dahlman, Anant Paravastu, and Francisco Robles.

Dahlman is a chemical and bioengineer who comes to the Georgia Institute of Technology after studying in vivo gene editing as a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Dahlman, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, is interested in drug delivery, targeted in vivo gene editing, and using genomics to improve biomaterial design. He has already designed and synthesized nanoparticles that efficiently deliver RNAs to the lung and heart. These nanoparticles been used by a dozen labs across the U.S. to study cancer, atherosclerosis, inflammation, emphysema, and pulmonary hypertension, and are being evaluated for clinical trials.

Paravastu, an associate professor who joined the faculty of Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in August 2015, specializes in the use of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for structural characterization of self-assembled proteins, to better understand plaque formation, which is the pathological hallmark of diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and type-II diabetes (amyloid diseases).

Paravastu, whose Ph.D. is form the University of California-Berkeley, has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and also a $1.67 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study a specific protein in the body believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease.

Robles comes to Georgia Tech this summer, having served a post-doctoral fellowship in the Chemistry Department at Duke University. His research interest is novel microscopy methods that provide functional and molecular contrast to improve our understanding and gain new insight into various diseases in order to achieve earlier and better diagnoses.

A new assistant professor in the Coulter Department, Robles’ research program specifically focuses on developing and applying label-free linear and nonlinear spectroscopic methods, along with advanced signal processing methods to gain access to novel forms of functional and molecular contrast for a variety of applications, including cancer detection, tumor margin assessment, hematology, and neuron functional imaging.

Now with more than 180 faculty researchers, the Petit Institute is an internationally recognized hub of multidisciplinary research, where engineers and scientists are working on solving some of the world’s most challenging health issues. With 18 research centers and more than $24 million invested in state-of-the-art core facilities, the Petit Institute is translating scientific discoveries into game-changing solutions to solve real-world problems.

CONTACT:

Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience