Education:

• Post-doctoral Fellow (2017 – 2020): Department of Radiation Oncology, Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Ph.D. (2013 – 2017): Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oklahoma
• M.S. (2010 – 2013): Department of Biomedicine Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Biography:

Needa Brown joined the UCF Department of Materials Science and Engineering in fall 2024 as an assistant professor under the Infectious Disease and Travel Health Initiative. Her research is centered around understanding and leveraging inherent material-biological interactions to design next-generation nanomaterial solutions to tackle cancer and infectious diseases. She completed her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 2017 and continued her training as a post-doctoral fellow in the Division of Medical Physics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she later was promoted to Instructor of Medicine. In September 2021 she moved to Northeastern University as an assistant teaching professor of physics, where she was the Founder and Director of the M.S. in nanomedicine program, served as Assistant Director of the NCI-funded CaNCURE program, and launched a successful Bio-Nano research program funded by multiple CDMRP and NIH awards.

Her research program at UCF aims to study nanomaterial-biological interactions in a systematic approach with the goal to create a pipeline for nanoengineered biomedical solutions that will expand therapeutic options to previously unattainable patient populations. Her lab focuses on three key areas: 1) Design of nanomaterials to circumvent drug delivery barriers, 2) Leveraging inherent material-biological interactions for nanomaterial design, and 3) Designing tools to assess nanomaterial response in biologically relevant systems.

• Nanomedicine
• Drug delivery for cancer and infectious diseases
• Biomaterials
• Nanodiagnostics
• Material-biological interactions

• Baldwin, Paige, S. Yang… Brown, S. Sridhar. “A nano-cocktail of the PARP inhibitor talazoparib and CDK inhibitor dinaciclib for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer”. Cancer Nanotechnology, 15(20), 2024.
• Carmès, Lena, G. Bort… Brown^#, R. Berbeco^#. “A proof-of-concept AGuIX-nanobody conjugate nanoparticle for real-time immune checkpoint inhibitor monitoring”. Nanoscale, 16(5):2347-2360, 2024.
• Brown, Needa^*, P. Rocchi^*, L. Carmès, et al. “Tuning ultrasmall theranostic nanoparticles for MRI contrast and radiation dose amplification”. Theranostics, 13(14):4711-1429, 2023.
• Yang, Shicheng, A. Green, Brown, et al. “Sustained delivery of PARP inhibitor Talazoparib for the treatment of BRCA-deficient ovarian cancer”. Frontiers in Oncology, 13:1175617, 2023.
• Virani, Needa, J. Kwon, H. Zhou, R. Mason, R. Berbeco, and A. Protti. “In vivo Hypoxia Characterization using Blood Oxygen Level Dependent Magnetic Resonance Imaging in a Preclinical Glioblastoma Mouse Model.” Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 76:52-60, 2021.
• Virani, Needa, O. Kelada, S. Kunjachan, A. Detappe, et al. “Noninvasive Imaging of Tumor Hypoxia After Nanoparticle-Mediated Vascular Disruption.” PLoSOne, 15(7):e0236245, 2020.
• Virani, Needa, E. Thavathiru, P. McKernan, et al. “Anti-CD73 and Anti-OX40 Immunotherapy Coupled with a Novel Biocompatible Enzyme Prodrug System for the Treatment of Recurrent, Metastatic Ovarian Cancer.” Cancer Letters, 425:174-82, 2018.
• Virani, Needa, C. Davis, P. McKernan, et al. “Phosphatidylserine Targeted Single-walled Carbon Nanotubes for the Photothermal Ablation of Bladder Cancer.” Nanotechnology, 29(3):035101, 2017.

• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Scholar (NEU, 2023)
• Outstanding Graduate Student Award (OU, 2017)
• Patrick Foster Graduate Fellowship (OU, 2016)
• Boggs Family Sooner Engineering Education Scholarship (OU, 2016)
• College of Engineering Boggs Graduate Fellowship (OU, 2014)

• Biomedical Engineering Society
• Graduate Women in Science
• Materials Research Society