Five Indian American researchers and one Bangladeshi-American have been named among the 2020 Directors New Innovator Award recipients by the National Institutes of Health.

Among the recipients are Anindita Basu, Subhamoy Dasgupta, Deeptankar DeMazumder, Siddhartha Jaiswal, Shruti Naik, and Mekhail Anwar, according to the NIH website.

Basu, of the University of Chicago, was selected for the project, Profiling Transcriptional Heterogeneity in Microbial Cells at Single Cell Resolution and High-Throughput Using Droplet Microfluidics.

The Indian American is an assistant professor in genetic medicine at the University of Chicago and leads a multi-disciplinary research group that uses genomics, microfluidics, imaging and nano/bio-materials to develop new tools to aid in diagnosis and treatment of disease.

Basu obtained a B.S. in physics and computer engineering at the University of Arkansas, Ph.D. in soft matter physics at University of Pennsylvania, followed by post-doctoral studies in applied physics, molecular biology and bioinformatics at Harvard University and Broad Institute.

Her lab applies high-throughput single-cell and single-nucleus RNA-seq to map cell types and their function in different organs and organisms, using Drop-seq and DroNc-seq that Basu co-invented during her post-doctoral work.

Dasgupta is with the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and was named for his project, Decoding the Nuclear Metabolic Processes Regulating Gene Transcription.

Dasgupta is an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Stress Biology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. He earned his B.S. from Bangalore University and M.S. in biochemistry from Banaras Hindu University, India before receiving his Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, where, as a Department of Defense predoctoral fellow, he characterized the functions of a novel gene MIEN1 in tumor progression and metastasis.

He then joined the laboratory of Bert W. O'Malley, M.D. at Baylor College of Medicine, where he studied the functions of transcriptional coregulators in tumor cell adaptation and survival, as a Susan G. Komen postdoctoral fellow.

DeMazumder, of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, was chosen for the project, Eavesdropping on Heart-Brain Conversations During Sleep for Early Detection and Prevention of Fatal Cardiovascular Disease.

DeMazumder joined the University of Cincinnati in 2017 as assistant professor of medicine, director of the Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence and a Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiologist after completing his doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook in Synaptic Electrophysiology, a medical degree at Medical College of Virginia-Virginia Commonwealth University, internship at Mount Sinai and residency at University of Virginia in Internal Medicine, and clinical and research fellowships at Johns Hopkins University.

His longstanding goals are to transform clinical observations into testable research hypotheses, translate basic research findings into medical advances, and evaluate personalized treatment protocols in rigorous clinical trials, while caring for patients with heart rhythm disorders and improving their quality of life.

Jaiswal, of Stanford University, was named for his project, Clonal Hematopoiesis in Human Aging and Disease.

Jaiswal is an investigator at Stanford University in the Department of Pathology, where his lab focuses on understanding the biology of the aging hematopoietic system.

As a post-doctoral fellow, he identified a common, pre-malignant state for blood cancers by reanalysis of large sequencing datasets.

This condition, termed "clonal hematopoiesis, is characterized by the presence of stem cell clones harboring certain somatic mutations, primarily in genes involved in epigenetic regulation of hematopoiesis.

Clonal hematopoiesis is prevalent in the aging population and increases the risk of not only blood cancer, but also cardiovascular disease and overall mortality. Understanding the biology of these mutations and how they contribute to the development of cancer and other age-related diseases is the current focus of work in the lab.

Naik, of New York University School of Medicine, was named for her project, Decoding Microbe-Epithelial Stem Cell Interactions in Health and Disease.

Naik is an assistant professor at New York University School of Medicine. She received her doctorate in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania-National Institutes of Health Graduate Partnership Program.

There she discovered that normal bacteria living on our skin, known as the commensal microbiota, educate the immune system and help protect us from harmful pathogens.

As a Damon Runyon Fellow at the Rockefeller University, Naik found that epithelial stem cells can harbor a memory of inflammation which boosts their regenerative abilities and established a new paradigm in inflammatory memory, her bio states.

The Naik lab studies the dynamic interactions between immune cells, epithelial stem cells, and microbes with a focus on 3 major areas of research: Tissue regeneration and cancer, host-microbe interactions, and early in life immunity.

Anwar, of U.C. San Francisco, was named for his project, Implantable Nanophotonic Sensors forIn VivoImmunoresponse.

Anwar, whose father is from Bangladesh, is a physician-scientist at UCSF, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology. Driven by the challenges his patients face when fighting cancer specifically addressing the vast heterogeneity in treatment response by identifying the optimal treatment to pair with each patients unique biology he leads a laboratory focused on developing integrated circuits (or computer chips) forin vivocancer sensing.

After completing his bachelors in physics at U.C. Berkeley, where he was awarded the University Medal, he received his medical degree at UCSF, and doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where his research focused on using micro-fabricated devices for biological detection.

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Five Indian American Researchers Named Among NIH 2020 New Innovator Awardees - India West