Welcome Harshika!

We are excited to announce that Harshika Varadhan has joined the Chan Lab!

Brief bio: Harshika is a first-year chemical biology student pursuing her PhD in Chemistry. She grew up in Baltimore, MD and graduated with a B.S. in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research at CMU with Dr. Nisha Shukla involved synthesizing amino acid-coated copper nanoparticles to allow for more effective enantiomeric separation of chiral pharmaceutical drugs. Harshika also was a summer intern at Merck in Quality Operations where she worked in the Virology department to standardize reporting of process control limits to test potency, purity, pH, etc. of manufactured vaccines. She also worked as a research assistant at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center under Dr. Emrullah Korkmaz where she worked on microfluidics-based formulation of drug-encapsulated biodegradable microparticles. When not working in the lab, Harshika loves to dance, watch reality TV, and bake!

She can't wait to get started with the Chan Lab and work on exciting research!