P.S.Nandini is from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India and is passionate about advancing humanity’s approach to neurological and neuropsychiatric care by creating affordable and scalable neurotechnological solutions for brain disorders. While pursuing her undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from SASTRA University, Tamil Nadu, India, she conducted research in Alzheimer’s disease at Cornell University’s Medical College in New York City through a semester abroad scholarship. She then received the fully-funded Erasmus Mundus Scholarship from the European Union to pursue an MS in Neuroscience from Charite Universitatsmedizin-Berlin, Germany and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands. During her MS, she looked at the interaction between neurons and glial cells in the hippocampus, and used non-invasive brain stimulation for pre-surgical planning in brain tumor patients at the Charite Hospital, Berlin. For her MS thesis, she joined a clinical trial team at Amsterdam University Medical Center, Netherlands and used brain stimulation to modulate brain plasticity in neuropsychiatric patients. As the first person in her family to pursue a PhD, she is now a part of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Bioengineering PhD program, supported by the H2H8 Graduate Research Grant, the Quad Fellowship, J.N.Tata Endowment Scholarship and Narotam Sekhsaria Scholarship. She is pursuing her PhD under the mentorship of Dr. Edward Chang and Dr. Ankit Khambhati at UCSF as part of a clinical trial developing neurostimulation therapy for patients with treatment-resistant depression using surgically implanted sensing-enabled adaptive deep brain stimulation (DBS). She is currently working on identifying biomarkers of dysfunctional mood circuits in the brain, and developing personalized brain stimulation protocols for each patient based on these biomarkers. Outside of academics, she is the Founder and CEO of The Keni Project, a student-run organization that has so far set up 12 libraries in underprivileged schools in 4 cities in India by collecting used books from the public. She is also a student and performer of Carnatic vocal music and Veena (an endangered Indian instrument) for the past 23 and 13 years respectively. She is also a painter and artist, for which she won the National Balshree award (second highest civilian honor for the youth of India) given by the President of India.”
PS Nandini
