Shilpa Sant, PhD

Dr. Shilpa Sant is an Assistant Professor at University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Bioengineering. She is a faculty member at UPMC-Hillman Cancer Center and McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. After earning her Bachelors in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Masters in Pharmacology from the University of Mumbai, Dr. Sant received her PhD in Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Montreal, Canada. Before joining Pitt, she was interdisciplinary training fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Center for Bioengineering at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. The central research theme in her lab is to develop physiologically relevant three-dimensional microenvironments with the goal to elucidate how microenvironmental factors drive cellular behaviors in disease progression as well as in tissue repair/regeneration. Her research team combines interdisciplinary biomaterial-, molecular/cell biology- and micro/nanotechnology-based approaches to build biomimetic microenvironments. Her work is funded by National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Health. Visit her laboratory here. Dr. Sant has contributed over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals including research and review articles, book chapters, and abstracts. She has edited a book entitled “Nanomaterials in Tissue Engineering: Fabrication and Applications” and a journal issue “Stem Cells: Microenvironment, Micro/Nanotechnology, and Application,” in Stem Cells International. Dr. Sant’s achievements in research have been recognized by prestigious fellowships: Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NIH, USA), Post-doctoral Fellowship (Le Fonds Quebecoise de Recherche sur Nature et Technologies, FQRNT, Canada), Post-graduate Scholarship (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada). She has also received several awards including 2017 Young Innovator’s Award, 2016 Rising Star Early Career Faculty Award and 2013 Rising Star Fellow Award from Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, Biomedical Engineering Society to name a few. She serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on NanoBioScience and also serves as an editorial board member of Scientific Reports and In Silico Pharmacology, among others. Dr. Sant is a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Society for Biomaterials, American Association of Cancer Research, and the Indian Pharmaceutical Association. View a list of Dr. Sant’s publications here.