Tejal Desai, PhD
Tejal Desai is a professor at the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences within the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF); the director of the NIH training grant for the Joint Graduate Program in Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and UCSF; and the founding director of the UCSF/UC Berkeley Master’s Program in Translational Medicine.
Dr. Desai’s lab focuses in the area of biomedical micro and nanotechnology for therapeutic delivery. Professor Desai’s research spans multiple disciplines including materials engineering, cell biology, tissue engineering, and pharmacological delivery systems to address issues concerning disease and clinical translation. She has published over 220 peer-reviewed articles, holds numerous patents, and is currently the founder of five start-up companies.
Her research efforts have earned recognition including Technology Review’s "Top 100 Young Innovators,” and Popular Science’s Brilliant 10. Some of her other honors include the Dawson Biotechnology award, and both the UC Berkeley and Brown University Distinguished Engineering Alumni awards. Recently, she was named Chair of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows. In 2015, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Desai received her B.S. from Brown University in biomedical engineering and was awarded a Ph.D. in bioengineering jointly from UCSF and UCB.