Samira Kiani, associate professor of pathology, School of Medicine, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the U.S. government’s highest honor to outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers.
The White House announced the award on Jan. 14. She is one of five grantees funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to receive the honor.
Kiani’s project focused on developing cutting-edge epigenetic editing tools with the potential to revolutionize cellular programming in vivo, pushing the boundaries of gene regulation by integrating this with advanced synthetic biology tools. The innovative combination of these tools aimed not only to modulate gene expression in a precise and controlled manner but also to make these applications dynamically controllable, enabling new therapeutic strategies for a range of conditions, including inflammation-driven diseases and cellular rejuvenation.
Kiani holds an MD from Tehran University of Medical Sciences. She completed her postdoctoral training in the Center for Synthetic Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been at Pitt since 2020.