People

Neel S. Joshi

Principal Investigator

Neel Joshi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and an affiliate in Bioengineering at Northeastern University. He completed his PhD at UC Berkeley in the lab of Matt Francis and a postdoc at Boston University in the lab of Mark Grinstaff before starting his independent academic career at Harvard University and then moving to Northeastern in January 2020. He is broadly interested in topics related to biologically inspired materials, protein engineering, self-assembly, biomanufacturing, and biointerfaces. His group works at the intersection of biomaterials science and synthetic biology.

Email: ne.joshi@northeastern.edu

Research Scientists

Avinash Manjula-Basavanna

Senior Research Scientist

Avinash obtained his Ph.D. degree at JNCASR, India, where he worked on bioinspired design strategies pertaining to three primary aspects viz. molecular engineering, molecular biomimicry, and molecular materials. As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, he shifted gears to engineered living materials by integrating synthetic biology, materials engineering, and nanotechnology at Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University. He specifically focuses on designing and developing novel sustainable living materials for energy, health, and environmental applications, with a strong emphasis on commercialization.

STAT Wunderkind Award
NSF Idea Machine (Big Ideas) Grand Prize Winner
World’s Top 35 Innovators Under 35, Technology Review, MIT
Deep Tech Pioneer
Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award
Semifinalist of MIT Water Innovation Prize
Semifinalist of Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge
Harvard Innovation Lab’s Venture Incubation Program
Innovation Scholars In-Residence Program at Rashtrapati Bhawan (President’s House) by the President of India

Email: a.manjula-basavanna@northeastern.edu Profile URL

Postdoctoral Fellows

Rong Chang

Postdoctoral Fellow

Rong obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Biology from Tsinghua University in 2022. From 2019 to 2020, he was a visiting scholar in the laboratory of Prof. Robert Langer at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research of MIT. Rong joined the Joshi lab in April 2023. His primary areas of focus lie in the design and synthesis of functional peptides and proteins to uncover new insights and develop innovative materials that can have far-reaching applications in various scientific disciplines, such as biomaterials, biotechnology, and regenerative medicine.

Previous Education: Ph.D. Tsinghua University

Email: ro.chang@northeastern.edu

Mert Vural

Postdoctoral Fellow

Mert is a material scientist working on soft matter, self-assembly in materials, and composites. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland, where he worked on the assembly of nanoparticles in elastomer matrices to develop functional materials and devices for soft electronics and robotics. He continued working on composite materials for soft haptic interfaces at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linkoping University through Wallenberg postdoctoral scholarship. During his tenure at Pennsylvania State University as a researcher, he expanded his work on molecular self-assembly to structural proteins engineered through synthetic biology. He is an experienced researcher who studied nanomaterials, composites, molecular self-assembly, engineered proteins, bioelectronics, soft electronics, and robotics. In Joshi Lab., he aims to combine his broad research expertise to demonstrate sustainable actuation materials for wearable robotic devices.

Previous Education: University of Maryland Ph.D.

Email: m.vural@northeastern.edu