Shikha Nangia

Professor,
Interim Department Chair BMCE

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering

343 Link Hall

snangia@syr.edu

315.443.0571

Degrees:

  • Ph. D. Chemistry (2006) University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
  • M.Sc. Chemistry (2000) Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
  • B.Sc. Chemistry (1998) University of Delhi, Delhi, India

Lab/Center Affiliation:

  • Syracuse Biomaterials Institute

Research interests:

  • Blood-brain barrier
  • Targeted cancer drug delivery
  • Multiscale modeling of nanomaterials
  • Nanomedicine
  • Virus nanotechnology

Current Research:

My research group focuses on studying blood-brain barrier using theoretical and computational techniques. The goal is to enable the transport of drug molecules across the blood-brain barrier, which has been the biggest impediment for finding a cure for brain related ailments such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. This project was funded through the NSF-CAREER award.

Additionally, we our group focuses on computational multiscale modeling of nanomaterials, including nanomedicine, drug delivery nanocarriers, and nano-bio interactions. The goal of this research is to design efficient nanosized drug delivery carriers to target cancer tumor cells that hold the key to a new era of cancer treatment. To achieve our research goals we are developing quantitative approaches for characterizing interaction of nanoscale entities with living matter (serum, cell-membranes, cells). Our computational approaches are directed to analyze these complex nano-bio interactions in an effort to design safe and smart drug delivery nanocarriers.

Courses Taught:

  • Statistical thermodynamics
  • Multiscale computational methods
  • Reaction kinetics
  • Engineering Materials, Properties, and Processing

Honors:

  • 2017 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Education
  • 2017 Meredith Teaching Recognition Award
  • 2016 College Technology Educator of the Year, Technical Alliance of Central New York
  • 2016 ACS OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award
  • 2015 Nappi Research Competition Award
  • NSF CAREER award (2015)
  • Faculty Excellence Award, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University (2015)

Recent Publications:

Development of effective stochastic potential method using random matrix theory for efficient conformational sampling of semiconductor nanoparticles at non-zero temperatures, J. Scher, M. Bayne, A. Srihari, S. Nangia, and A. Chakraborty, Journal of Chemical Physics, 149, 014103 (2018). https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5026027
Self-assembly simulations of classic claudins-insights into the pore structure, selectivity and higher-order complexes, F. J. Irudayanathan, X. Wang, N. Wang, S. Willsey, I. Seddon, and S. Nangia, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 122, 7463-7474 (2018). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.8b03842

Mechanism of Antibacterial Activity of Choline-Based Ionic Liquids (CAGE), Kelly N. Ibsen, H. Ma, A. Banerjee, E. E. L. Tanner, S. Nangia, and S. Mitragotri, ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering, 4, 2370-2379 (2018). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.8b00486

Dynamics of OmpF trimer formation in the bacterial outer membrane of Escherichia coli, H. Ma, A. Khan, and S. Nangia, Langmuir, 34, 5623-5634 (2018). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.7b02653

Architecture of the paracellular channels formed by Claudins of the blood-brain barrier tight junctions, F. J. Irudayanathan, N. Wang, X. Wang , and S. Nangia, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1749-6632 (2017). https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nyas.13378

Modeling diversity in structures of bacterial outer membrane lipids H. Ma, D. D. Cummins, N. B. Edelstein, J. Gomez, A. Khan, M. D. Llewellyn, T. Picudella,  S. R. Willsey and S. Nangia, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, 13, 811–824 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.6b00856

Drug-specific design of telodendrimer architecture for effective Doxorubicin encapsulation, W. Jiang, X. Wang, D. Guo, J. Luo, and S. Nangia, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 120, 9766–9777 (2016).  http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.6b06070