Nisita Dutta

Nisita grew up in central New Jersey and discovered a love for scientific research during her undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). After becoming an Operations Coordinator for Camp Kesem at JHU, a camp for children whose parents suffer from cancer, she decided to combine her interests in medicine and engineering to help alleviate the burden of disease for patients.

Nisita researched in the lab of Dr. Rebecca Schulman for three years during her undergraduate years where she worked with DNA nanotechnology systems. Her work eventually led to a publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society which highlighted a DNA stand buffer system that could keep a target stand of DNA constant in chemically noisy environments. After this introduction to scientific research, Nisita went on to continue her training through the Biomedical Engineering Summer Internship Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Here she worked in the Clinical Center under Dr. Bradford Wood where she created a flow-through drug elution system to measure the chemotherapeutic release rate from embolic beads used in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. When she returned to JHU for her final year, Nisita wanted to expand on her biological research experiences, and decided to join Dr. Marc Ostermeier’s lab. She studied the effects of specific point mutations in the beta-lactamase protein in E. coli on bacterial growth, without the presence of antibiotics in the media. This research was eventually published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, and Nisita continued in Dr. Ostermeier’s lab to study the specific stress pathways upregulated in these E. coli as a master’s student.

After finishing her master’s degree, Nisita attended medical school at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and has since completed her preclinical years. In 2022, she was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue her PhD research at the University of Cambridge. During her PhD, Nisita plans to work in the labs of Prof Gonçalo Bernardes and Dr. Christine Alewine to create nanobody-drug conjugates that target the mesothelin protein to treat pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

In the future, Nisita hopes to lead her own research group in an academic environment while continuing her interests outside of lab which include singing, doing triathlons, and teaching.