Dr. Amir Sheikhi

Dr. Amir Sheikhi is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering (by courtesy) at Penn State. In August 2019, he founded the Bio-Soft Materials Laboratory (B-SMaL) to tackle some of the quintessential challenges of the 21^st century in biomedicine and the environment by designing novel bio-based soft materials via micro- and nanoengineering techniques. As of July 2022, Amir’s lab consists of 10 graduate students, 1 postdoc, and more than 15 undergraduate researchers, funded by NIH (R01), ACS PRF DNI, Meghan Rose Bradley Foundation, Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation (CLSF), Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE), Benkovic Research Initiative, etc. Amir’s research has been featured in more than 60 publications, 40 seminars, and 12 reports of invention/patent applications with recognition by over 40 news media outlets. He is the recipient of several major awards, including the AIChE’s 35 Under 35, ACS Unilever Award for Outstanding Young Investigator in Colloid & Surfactant Science, The John C. Chen Young Professional Leadership Scholarship, and The UNIFOR Global Research Fellowship. Recently, Amir was named as one of the 9 emerging leaders in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering worldwide, featured on the cover of the Inaugural “Futures” Issue of Bioengineering & Translational Medicine journal.

Amir earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at McGill University and continued to complete two years of post-doctoral research on colloids and macromolecules at McGill Chemistry under Theo van de Ven and Ashok Kakkar. Before joining Penn State, Amir was a post-doctoral fellow in Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School and UCLA, working with Ali Khademhosseini. Amir pays special attention to promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion via his research, teaching, and outreach activities, and has served several professional communities, such as ACS, AIChE, MRS, BMES, APS, TAPPI, etc. He is currently an Associate Editor of Bioengineering & Translational Medicine and an Editorial Board Member of Biomaterials and Bioactive Materials journals