The Team
Post-doctoral Fellows
DI HUANG
Visiting Scholar
Di received her PhD from The University of Auckland in New Zealand, where her research emphasis was on formulating hyaluronic acid coated nanoparticles for the delivery of peptides in the treatment of retinal ischaemia. In 2018, she moved to the U.S. and worked as a postdoc at Purdue University in Indiana, where she spent most of her time in uncovering pharmacological function of small molecule compounds and fabricating polymeric nanoparticles to combat obesity and muscular dystrophy. Di joined Mass Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School in 2020 and has been working in the Amiji lab as a visiting scholar since. She is currently interested in understanding the pathogenesis of chronic rhinosinusitis and developing targeted therapeutic strategies. When not in the lab, Di enjoys cooking, travelling, and spending time outdoors.
ANISHA DSOUZA
Visiting Scholar
Anisha DSouza, PhD, is currently a Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary/Harvard Medical School and a Visiting Scholar at Dr. Amiji’s lab in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston. Her areas of research involve formulation development including colloidal carriers for targeted delivery and bioenhancement strategies. Currently, she is working on non-invasive strategies for the delivery of nucleic acids to the brain.
VALENTINA DI FRANCESCO
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Valentina obtained her PhD from the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT)/University of Genoa, focusing her research on preparing lipid/polymeric nanoparticles for delivering small drugs in treating cardiovascular disease. In 2021, she initiated a project at IIT, employing artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop a model for predicting lipid nanoparticle features. By 2022, she moved to the USA, joining Northeastern University and working in Amiji lab as a postdoctoral researcher. Her current focus lies in investigating nose-to-brain delivery of small and large molecules for CNS disease using the Minimal Invasive Nasal Depot (MIND) technique. Outside the lab, Valentina enjoys spending time with friends, engaging in outdoor activities, and making pizza.
SATVEER JAGWANI
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Satveer Jagwani obtained his Master’s degree in Pharmacology from Navodaya Pharmacy College, India in 2012 and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from KLE University, India, in 2021. His primary area of research includes the design and characterization of polymeric and lipid micro/nanoparticles for applications in cancer and infection management. In 2021, he moved to the USA and joined Massachusetts General Hospital, where he worked on developing sustained-release polymer and lipid-based formulations for orthopedic applications. In 2023, he joined Professor Dr. Mansoor Amiji’s lab as a postdoctoral research associate, focusing on the biodistribution and pharmacokinetic evaluations of a novel taxoid nanoemulsion. He has been awarded the International Travel Grant twice by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India, for attending the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists conference, USA in 2018 & 2019.
MIAO ZHANG
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Fellowship Supported by Moderna Therapeutics
Dr. Miao Zhang is a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern and Moderna, a role she has held since January 2024. Her current project focuses on developing mechanistic PBPK and PKPD models for new mRNA drugs to support clinical development. Dr. Zhang earned her PhD from China Pharmaceutical University, where she focused on developing mechanistic PBPK absorption models to improve model’s predictive performance in fasted and fed states. Prior to her current role, she completed postdoctoral research at the University at Buffalo (2023-2024), focusing on developing PopPK model to estimate systemic exposure in both plasma and CSF of HIV patients. To date, Dr. Zhang has published 10 papers as the first author.
ROBYN NOVOROLSKY
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Fellowship Supported by Moderna Therapeutics
I am from Canada and grew up in a town just outside of Toronto, Ontario. For my undergraduate studies I attended Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada and graduated with a BSc Honours Biology degree in 2017. I then moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada where I started my graduate studies in the department of Pharmacology at Dalhousie University, and in 2023 I graduated with my PhD in Pharmacology. The main research areas of the lab I did my PhD in were neuropharmacology, examining how mitochondrial dysfunction can contribute to neurodegeneration, and looking at ways in which improving mitochondrial performance may be neuroprotective. Specifically, my research looked at inhibition the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU) complex as a neuroprotective strategy for ischemic stroke. The MCU is the main channel for calcium influx into mitochondria, and mitochondrial dysfunction and mitochondrial calcium overloading are widely accepted as early pathological events in ischemic injury that are known to trigger the initiation of multiple cell death pathways. I utilized various cell based assays and molecular techniques to examine the protective effects of novel small molecule MCU inhibitors in an in vitro model of ischemic reperfusion injury, and initiated the start of some of the in vivo studies with those small molecules in the lab. I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Northeastern-Moderna joint fellowship program, working with the Amiji Lab and the in vitro investigative pathology team at Moderna.
BEATRICE MURIUKI
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Fellowship Supported by Moderna Therapeutics
Beatrice Muriuki is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Northeastern University/Moderna Therapeutics Inc. She completed her PhD thesis at WACCBIP-University of Ghana. Her PhD research in Ann Moormann’s laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School investigated genetic associations of pediatric lymphomas. Prior work experience in drugs and immunotherapies discovery in Lisa Cavacini’s lab at MassBiologics include ELISA, Luminex, Cell sorting and Flow cytometry, PCR and gel electrophoresis, protein expression and purification from bacteria and mammalian cells, and synthesis of monoclonal antibodies from humans and mouse fusions for Lyme disease. Her current project in pathology sciences seeks to build in vitro models to develop and derisk advanced mRNA therapeutics.
Ph.D. Candidates
MEGHA SURESH
Industrial PhD student
Megha is an Industrial scientist with 6+ year experience in early discovery research with Extensive experience in myeloid cell biology, antigen presentation assays, T cell fates, functional cellular assays, FACS, ELISA, WES, apoptosis assays, In vitro disease models, co-culture disease models.
APURVA KRISHNA
Experiential PhD Fellow (Fellowship with GSK Vaccines)
Apurva is currently pursuing his Industrial PhD degree in Bioengineering which is a joint collaboration of GSK and Northeastern University. He completed his Bachelors’ in Biomedical Engineering from his home country , India. He came to US and joined Northeastern University in 2019 to pursue his Masters’ Bioengineering. Apurva also holds diploma in Nanomedicine. He has expertise in nanoparticle formulations especially Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs). His current PhD project is related to LNPs, where he is aiming to encapsulate STING agonists and use it as an adjuvant for vaccine.
TAYLOR HICKMAN
Industrial PhD student
Taylor is an Industrial scientist with 8+ years of experience as an Investigative Toxicologist at Takeda.
PRASHANT AGARWAL
Senior Scientist , Preformulation at Amgen / Interdisciplinary PhD student , College of Engineering, Northeastern University
Prashant Agarwal received Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from University of Pune, India. Then received his Master’s in plastics engineering from UMass Lowell. Prashant worked at Lonza/Capsugel for 5 years focused on developing lipid-based drug delivery systems for clinical development. Prashant joined Amgen’s Preformulation group in 2015. Prashant supports form selection, developability molecule assessment and formulation development for various preclinical discovery research projects across multiple therapeutic areas. Prashant’s research interests include enabling formulation development (lipid-based formulations and amorphous dispersions), sustained release injectable technologies and application of data analytics tools to aid formulation development. Prashant plans to study CNS delivery of Targeted Protein Degraders (PROTACs) for his PhD research.
RAQUEL SEVILLA
Industrial PhD student
I’m a preclinical discovery scientist specializing in small animal, in vivo, multimodal imaging. I have hands-on experience with both data acquisition and analysis. Our team works with a wide range of preclinical imaging systems, including: MRI, CT, Ultrasound, bioluminescence, and fluorescence. Therefore, I have experience with functional, anatomical, and molecular readouts. I have worked on the neuroscience, oncology, respiratory, and immunology disease areas supporting multiple stages of drug discovery including target validation, lead ID, and optimization. I also have experience in developing and validating novel animal models.
ANNA PRYZBYLA
Graduate student
I have a Master’s degree in Biomedical Science from Rutgers University and 7 years of research experience in the industry. I am currently an industry-PhD student in the Pharmaceutical Sciences program with a focus in Biomedical Science. I am interested in antibody-drug conjugates and how their mechanism of action/resistance may be affected by different immune cell populations in the tumor microenvironment.
MATTHEW CHANG
Graduate student (Experiential PhD)
I am a research scientist with a strong engineering background focused on developing novel biologic based cancer therapies. After completing my MS in Chemical Engineering at Cornell University in 2016, I joined the lab of Dr. Wayne Marasco at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where my research focuses on discovering novel antibodies and engineering cellular therapies with unique functions.
ANIKA PAVIS
Experiential PhD student
Anika is an Experiential PhD student in Bioengineering as part of a collaboration between Ascidian Therapeutics and Northeastern University. After graduating from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, she worked in a stem cell research laboratory at Weill Cornell Medical School and as a clinical technologist at the Laboratory of Personalized Genomic Medicine at Columbia University, where she got her Masters in Biomedical Engineering. She now works as a scientist at Ascidian Therapeutics, where novel RNA exon editing is used to circumvent the limitations of other gene therapies. Anika looks forward to combining this unique technology with the Amiji Lab’s drug delivery expertise in a new approach to macrophage polarization and modulation of immune response.
KAVITA IYER
Industrial PhD Student
Kavita has 5+ years of experience in RNAi Chemistry and Discovery group at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals with an emphasis on synthesis, formulations, and analytical characterization of siRNA for preclinical testing in research and early development. She holds a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern where she worked on polymer-drug conjugates for IBD. Within the Chemical Engineering Industry PhD program, she is primarily focused on improving siRNA delivery to peritoneal macrophages, reprogramming them to an anti-inflammatory phenotype and utilizing them in a neuroinflammation disease model..
RAEKA PATEL
Industrial PhD student
I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Pharmacy from Mumbai University and Master’s in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Northeastern University with a concentration in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery Systems. I have been working at Biogen for 3.5 years in the Protein Biochemistry group where my research focuses on shuttling drug cargos conjugated to antibodies across the blood brain barrier into the central nervous system (CNS). Before I joined Biogen, I worked at Dyne therapeutics and also did a co-op at Entrada therapeutics where I learnt the basics of protein and antibody purification, conjugation, characterization and functional and binding assays. My research project at Dr. Amiji’s Lab will focus on delivering antibodies and antibody fragments intranasally to CNS targets using the Minimally Invasive Nasal Depot (MIND) technique.
Masters Students
PRANALI WAGHODE
Research Assistant
I hold a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology from NMIMS, Mumbai, India, and I am pursuing a Master of Science in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. My research experience spans formulation and analytical research and development, preclinical toxicology, and clinical research, with a strong focus on advancing drug delivery technologies. At Dr. Mansoor Amiji’s lab, I am working on developing thermosensitive emulsion formulations for pancreatic cancer therapy. I am eager to further my knowledge through a PhD, delving deeper into drug delivery and novel formulation strategies. My ultimate goal is to develop innovative pharmaceutical products that can one day be translated into real-world treatments, improving patient outcomes.
CLAIRE CALLAHAN
Master’s Student
I am a master’s student in the Bioengineering department at Northeastern University, with a Bachelor of Science in Cell and Molecular Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Design from Tulane University. My research at Tulane involved vaccine development, focusing on the use of combination adjuvants to stimulate mucosal immunity against Chlamydia muridarum. I have a strong interest in immunology and novel drug development and am eager to expand my knowledge through research in Dr. Amiji’s lab.
Last updated: May 2025