New Faculty Spotlight: Nasim Annabi
Dr. Nasim Annabi joined the Department of Chemical Engineering as an Assistant Professor in January 2015. Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern, Dr. Annabi was an Instructor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) at Harvard Medical School (2014). Dr. Annabi joined Harvard-MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow in 2011. Her research at Harvard involved engineering cardiac and vascular tissues, with a primary focus on the responses of cells and tissues to their microenvironment. During her postdoctoral research, Dr. Annabi developed technologies to engineer novel elastic and light-activated scaffolds for soft tissue repair. Dr. Annabi completed her PhD in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney in 2010. Her doctoral research focused on synthesizing advanced polymer-based biomaterials for tissue engineering applications. Currently, Dr. Annabi has a joint appointment as a part time lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Annabi’s group aims to bring unique expertise to the department in engineering advanced biomaterials. In particular, her research focuses on integrating biomaterials, tissue engineering approaches, as well as micro and nanoscale technologies to create 3D vascularized tissue constructs, which mimic native tissues. Dr. Annabi is passionate about translating her research into products that can improve health care. Her latest discovery in collaboration with her colleagues at Harvard, focusing on developing highly elastic tissue adhesives, has been favorably adopted by numerous surgeons and is in the final phase of preclinical trials. Dr. Annabi’s contributions appear in 42 journal articles, 7 book chapters/editorials, over 60 abstracts, and 6 patent/disclosure applications. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Nano Today, ACS Nano, Materials Today, Nature Asia, and Analytical Chemistry. As of March 2015, she has been cited ~1129 times with an h-index of 20 and has given 24 invited seminars and keynote lectures. Dr. Annabi’s interdisciplinary research has been recognized by several national and international awards including the Australian Prestigious Endeavour Award (2010) and the National Health and Medical Research Council Early Career Fellowship (2011) to name a few. In 2011, she was nominated for the Rita and John Cornforth Medal for excellent academic performance in a PhD degree at the University of Sydney. In addition, she has recently been selected as one of three finalists for the Bright Futures Award (2014) at Harvard University.