About the
Principal Investigator.

Indrajit Srivastava is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Texas Tech University, where he leads the Srivastava Lab within the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering. He earned his M.S. (2017) and Ph.D. (2020) in Bioengineering from the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the mentorship of Prof. Dipanjan Pan (now the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Nanomedicine at Penn State University). His doctoral research sought to unravel the fundamental origins of photoluminescence in carbon nanodots, establishing molecular-level insights into how surface chemistry and electronic structure govern their optical behavior, and translating these fundamental principles into their rational design for in vitro cellular imaging and array-based biosensing. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral training (2020–2023) under the joint mentorship of Prof. Shuming Nie (Grainger Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering), a pioneer in molecular spectroscopy, and Prof. Viktor Gruev, an expert in bioinspired imaging sensors and surgical imaging technologies. His postdoctoral research pioneered the integration of biological membrane engineering with plasmonic nanophotonics, establishing a new class of cell membrane-coated nanostructures with enhanced optical performance, colloidal stability, and molecular targeting capabilities. By bridging surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), photoacoustic imaging, and bioinspired multispectral imaging technologies, his work advanced new paradigms for detecting otherwise concealed tumor lesions, resolving multiple cancer biomarkers under a single excitation wavelength, and enabling molecularly precise image-guided surgical interventions.

His independent research program has attracted competitive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Heart Association (AHA), Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), and Robert A. Welch Foundation. Since establishing the Srivastava Lab in 2023, his research has advanced the frontiers of molecular imaging and precision nanomedicine through several complementary innovations, including: (i) the development of anatomically and optically tunable 3D tumor-mimicking phantoms that recapitulate tissue-relevant optical environments for quantitative benchmarking of NIR-I/NIR-II nanofluorophores under simulated surgical conditions (A. Harun et al., ACS Nano, 2025); (ii) the discovery of albumin-mediated amplification of near-infrared afterglow luminescence in semiconducting polymer nanoprobes, establishing a biomolecular strategy for enhancing persistent optical emission in image-guided interventions (N. Bendele et al., Advanced Functional Materials, 2024); (iii) the molecular engineering of albumin-chaperoned, ultrabright NIR-II nanofluorophores for deep-tissue optical imaging and pan-ovarian cancer visualization across multiscale tumor models (I. Vasquez et al., ACS Nanoscience Au, 2025; bioRxiv, 2026); (iv) the development of phenolic poly(acid)-derived hybrid nanomaterials whose molecular architecture governs colloidal stability, cellular internalization, and intrinsic redox-modulating properties, providing a foundation for multifunctional cancer nanomedicine (M. Megahed et al., ACS Nano Medicine, 2026); and (v) the engineering of biomineralized surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanotags that encode biomolecular identity into machine-learning-resolvable spectral fingerprints, advancing the convergence of plasmonic sensing and artificial intelligence for molecular diagnostics (Md. H. Rashid et al., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2026).

Selected Awards.
2026 - Whitacre Engineering Research Award
2026 - Inaugural Early Career Board Member, ACS Nano Medicine
2026 - NIH/NIGMS MIRA Early Stage Investigator Award
2026 - American Heart Association Career Development Award
2026 - Honored Faculty Member, Phi Beta Kappa Society
2026 - Early Career Reviewer, National Institute of Health
2025 - Rising Stars in Nanoscience, American Chemical Society
2024, 2025- Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award, Texas Tech University
2023 - ACS Leadership in Mentoring Award, American Chemical Society
2021, 2022 - Baxter Young Investigator Award, Baxter International Foundation
2021 - BMES UNITE Future Faculty Scholar, Biomedical Engineering Society
2021 - Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (Declined)
2021 - Outstanding Thesis in Carbon Science & Technology, Carbon Journal - Elsevier
2021 - ACS PMSE Future Faculty Scholar, American Chemical Society
2020 - BMES Career Development Award, Biomedical Engineering Society
2019 - Bioengineering Teaching Excellence Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2013 - Prof. A. K. Seal Undergraduate Fellowship, IIEST Shibpur