Padma Rajagopalan

Padma Rajagopalan is the Robert E. Hord Jr. Endowed Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Virginia Tech. She leads the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, specializing in 3D multi-cellular organoids of the liver, GI tract, airway, and tumors. Her research integrates biomaterials, tissue engineering, and computational methods to study liver biology, toxicity, and disease mechanisms. She holds affiliations with the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute and the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

Education: Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brown University, M.S. and B.S. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Research Interests: Focus on designing liver and tumor organoids to investigate fibrosis, hepatotoxicity, and cancer cell behavior. Her lab combines experimental and computational approaches, including systems biology and machine learning for drug repurposing (e.g., SARS-CoV-2 studies). Notable projects include bovine respiratory disease models and liver-gut cross-talk investigations.

Awards: AIMBE Fellow (2017), NSF CAREER Award (2010), Dean’s Research Excellence Award (2014), and NIH Biomaterials Study Section membership (2013–2017).

Advising and Grants: Advised over 30 graduate and undergraduate students. Active grants include NSF’s COMPASS Center ($18M), NIH SBIR ($2.4M), and USDA-NIFA projects. Leads the Computational Tissue Engineering IGEP program, training interdisciplinary scientists.

Labs/Teams: Directs the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest Biomedical Engineering collaboration and the ICTAS Center for Systems Biology of Engineered Tissues. Collaborates with experts in computational science, veterinary medicine, and materials engineering.