Dr. Bhatia trained at Brown, MIT, Harvard, and MGH. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and a fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences, Biomedical Engineering Society, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and American Society for Clinical Investigation. She has been awarded the 2014 Lemelson-MIT Prize; the 20th Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy, and Employment; the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship given to "the nation's most promising young professors in science and engineering;" the NSF CAREER Award; the Y.C. Fung Young Investigator Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the Young Investigator Award of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology; the Brown Engineering Alumni Medal; and was named a Merkin Fellow of the Broad Institute. As a passionate mentor and advocate for diversity in science and engineering, she has been the recipient of the Harvard Medical School Diversity Award and the Harvard-MIT Thomas McMahon Mentoring Award. She co-authored the first undergraduate textbook on tissue engineering and is a frequent advisor to governmental organizations on nanobiotechnology, biomedical microsystems, and tissue engineering. She and her over 150 trainees have contributed to more than 40 issued or pending patents and launched multiple biotechnology companies with 70+ commercial products at the intersection of medicine and miniaturization. She has published more than 180 manuscripts which have been cited a total of over 18,000 times. Prior to her position at MIT, she held a tenured position at UCSD, and has worked in industry at Pfizer, Genetics Institute, ICI Pharmaceuticals, and Organogenesis.
Education
M.D., Harvard Medical School
Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.S., Biomedical Engineering, Brown University
Click here for a list of Dr. Bhatia's external professional activities.
E-mail: sbhatia@mit.edu
Concise Biography
Sangeeta Bhatia is a cancer researcher, MIT professor, and biotech entrepreneur who works to adapt technologies developed in the computer industry for medical innovation. Trained as both a physician and engineer at Harvard, MIT, and Brown University, Bhatia’s laboratory leverages ‘tiny technologies’ of miniaturization to yield inventions with new applications in tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, medical diagnostics, predictive toxicology, and drug delivery. She and her trainees have launched multiple biotechnology companies to improve human health. Bhatia has received many honors including the Lemelson-MIT Prize, known as the ‘Oscar for inventors,’ and the Heinz Medal for groundbreaking inventions and advocacy for women in STEM fields. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, an Institute Member at the Broad Institute, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and Brown University's Board of Trustees.
Dr. Bhatia is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Bhatia is 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. She is also 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, Bhatia 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 to study, diagnose, and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer. Her work has been profiled broadly such as in Scientific American, the Boston Globe, BBC News, TED and TEDMED, Popular Science, Huffington Post, Forbes, PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW, the Economist, and MSNBC.