Piyush K. Jain, Ph.D., an assistant professor and Shah Rising Star Professor in the University of Florida Department of Chemical Engineering, has received the UF Provost’s Excellence Award for Assistant Professors for 2023. The awards are focused on junior faculty and recognize excellence in research.
Dr. Jain’s Nano-Biomolecular Precision Lab is focused on developing multi-scale biomolecular engineering platforms using nucleic acids chemistry, protein engineering, and nanoengineering. They employ an array of bioanalytical techniques with immediate applications for the detection and treatment of genetic disorders, infectious diseases, and cancer.
Over the past 4+ years, Dr. Jain has helped secure approximately $14 million of anticipated research funding with over $3 million as PI dedicated to his lab and is generously supported by the National Institutes of Health-Office of the Director, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Florida Breast Cancer Foundation, the United States–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund, the UF Health Cancer Center- Department of Urology Pilot Grant, the Dinesh O. Shah Endowed Professorship, and industry projects. In 2022, he received the National Institutes of Health National Institute of General Medical Sciences R35 Early-Stage Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award.
His work has been published in top journals including Nature Communications, Cell Reports Medicine, eBioMedicine (The Lancet Discovery Science), Communications Medicine (Nature Portfolio), Nanoscale, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, ACS Nano, Nature Protocols, Nucleic Acids Research, Plos One, etc. and he has been listed as an inventor on over 30 patent filings.
Dr. Jain has had several noteworthy accomplishments during his time at UF. In 2023, he was awarded the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, and in 2020, he was recognized as holder of the Shah Rising Star Professorship.
