Nazia Mehrban's Biography

Nazia Mehrban, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University College London

Dr. Nazia Mehrban is an interdisciplinary scientist with a research background in cell culture, materials characterisation and peptide chemistry. Her publications reflect the diversity of research she participates in, although the overarching theme has always been to understand the need for engineered tissues, cell and material interaction and the clinical applications. Toward this her research has primarily been focussed on engineering ligaments, skin, dental pulp, neural tissue and recently the larynx.
After gaining a PhD in ligament engineering (University of Birmingham), Dr. Mehrban furthered her understanding on scaffold materials, joining a Chemistry lab (University of Bristol) in 2011. This post gave her invaluable experience in designing and producing highly novel tuneable materials to control specific cellular behaviour. Dr. Mehrban has used these principles to create a scaffold to encourage neural stem cell migration, attachment and differentiation. Her current position, in the Department of Surgery at University College London, focuses on using this knowledge to overcome surgical limitations in larynx repair. For this she is exploring the possibility of using 3D printing technology to create the ideal scaffold, capable of retaining the larynx shape whilst encouraging cells to grow and produce truly functional biological tissue that is ultimately implantable.