Balaji Narasimhan

Balaji Narasimhan is an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Engineering and holds the Vlasta Klima Balloun Faculty Chair in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department at Iowa State University (ISU). He has been at ISU since 2001 before which he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Rutgers University. He served as Associate Dean of Research in the ISU College of Engineering from 2007 to 2013 and oversaw record growths in the college’s research portfolio and doctoral degree production. Currently, he directs the Nanovaccine Institute, an interdisciplinary consortium of more than 70 researchers from nine universities, two national laboratories, two research institutes, six companies, a healthcare coalition, and a hospital system that is focused on the design and development of next generation nanovaccines and nanotherapeutics. He is a co-founder of a startup called ImmunoNanoMed, Inc.

Narasimhan’s research is focused on the molecular design of nanoscale polymer systems and biomaterials to precisely control molecular architecture and functionality in these systems. His research has received funding from NSF, NIH, DOD, DOE, USDA, VA, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, the Roy J. Carver Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and industry. His current research thrusts are in the areas of engineered biomaterials for controlled delivery of drugs, peptides, and vaccines, nanoscale manipulation of multiphase polymeric materials, nanoparticles, and combinatorial biomaterials science. Narasimhan has published over 270 refereed journal papers, book chapters, and proceedings papers, co-invented ten patents, edited three textbooks, and delivered over 400 invited and contributed national and international lectures.

He has won various awards including the Society of Biomaterials Clemson Award for Contributions to the Literature, the Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Engineering Research Award, the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, the TR-100 Award by MIT’s Technology Review Magazine, and the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering at Purdue University. He is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, and the National Academy of Inventors. He is an Associate Editor of Science Advances and a Section Editor of Biological Engineering for Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering.

He received a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (India) in 1992 and a Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1996. He completed his postdoctoral work at MIT.