Shikha Nangia
Assistant Professor Shikha Nangia’s research on blood-brain barrier tight junctions was recognized at the International Conference on Tight Junctions and Their Proteins in Berlin this September. Her research team’s poster was selected from more than 40 other posters from around the world. With the recognition, the team was invited to submit their research for a special issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, which is among the most-cited multidisciplinary scientific journals published in the United States. Established in 1823, it is also one of the oldest continuously published serials.
Blood-brain barrier tight junctions are the nearly impervious barriers that form where cells lining blood vessels in the brain meet. A true understanding of how they are formed at the macromolecular level has proved elusive for researchers. In Nangia’s study, they were able to characterize the macromolecular self-assembly of the tight-junction interface using multiscale molecular dynamics simulations.
Nangia’s research team is comprised of College of Engineering and Computer Science graduate students Flaviyan Jerome Irudayanathan, Xiaoyi Wang and Nan Wang and undergraduate student Sarah Willsey ’17.
