Neil Chada PhD

Neil Chada joined the lab in Summer 2022 as a Biomedical Engineering PhD student in the MD/PhD program at Vanderbilt University. Neil completed high school in Hillsborough, NJ, and graduated from Temple University with a BS in Bioengineering. At Temple, Neil worked with Dr. Won Suh on the synthesis and biological characterization of a novel peptide sequence that induced human neural stem cell differentiation with the goal of being incorporated into a hydrogel to engineer a brain tissue model system.

Upon graduation, Neil spent a year at Vanderbilt in the lab of Dr. Cynthia Reinhart-King and worked with Dr. Pierre Massion to characterize the physical properties of cancerous human lung tissue as a potential biomarker for metastatic progression of disease. Neil then matriculated to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and is now returning to the lab, where his current interest is in studying the intersection of immunology with the tumor microenvironment to inform improved immunotherapy in cancer.