Alumni Spotlight: Parijat Bhatnagar, Ph.D. 2007

Parijat Bhatnagar completed his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Cornell under the supervision of Prof. Carl Batt on microfabrication of biomaterials. After graduation, he worked in semiconductor manufacturing at Intel Corp. followed by a joint postdoctoral training at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Houston Methodist Research Institute before starting an independent research program.
Bhatnagar is currently the Program Director for Cell-based Medicine at SRI International. In 2016, he received National Institute of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award. This award, part of the NIH “High-Risk, High-Reward Research” program, is designed to support scientific investigators with exceptional creativity who are conducting high-impact research.

Bhatnagar’s research focus is on the development of a platform therapeutics based on T cells engineered with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). These CAR T cells are designed to actively seek disease microenvironments, assess the disease burden, and produce a calibrated therapeutic response. To assist the clinical implementation, he is also developing technologies for manufacturing clinical doses of CAR T cells. Additionally, he is also directing his approaches to engineer cells as sensors for use in companion diagnostics and early detection.