Biography

Prakash Rai, Ph.D., joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at UMass Loweel as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Fall 2012. Prior to this he was an Instructor at the Center for Engineering in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rai is currently working on developing translational nanotechnology-based platforms for imaging, prevention and treatment of breast cancer. His research involves designing, synthesizing, characterizing, and evaluating the efficacy of these nano-platforms in cell culture, as well as animal models of the disease. Dr. Rai has several first author publications in journals including Nature Biotechnology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Angewandte Chemie, and Cancer Research. In 2010, Dr. Rai was chosen to receive the "Scholar in Training" award by the American Association of Cancer Research. Dr. Rai received his Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India in 2003 and his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007. Recently he received a grant award from the National Cancer institute to carry out research in the area of cancer nanomedicine

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Research Interest

Nanotechnology; Targeted Drug Delivery; Nanomedicine; Medical Imaging; Molecular Imaging; Cancer Research; Theranostics; Breast Cancer; Nanobiotechnology; Cancer Biology; Biotechnology; Biomedical Engineering; Bioengineering; Biomaterials; Tissue Engineering