Kiana Aran is an American biomedical entrepreneur who is Associate Professor in Medical Diagnostics at the

Keck Graduate Institute Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) is a private graduate school in Claremont, California. Founded by Henry Riggs in 1997, it is the seventh and newest member of the Claremont Colleges. History Henry Riggs, then president of Harvey Mudd College, ...

. She is also the Chief Scientific Officer at Cardea Bio. Her research considers the application of two dimensional materials in disease detection and diagnosis. She was awarded the 2021 ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'' – Estée Lauder Research Award for Inspiring Women in Science.

Early life and education

Aran was an undergraduate student at

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

and majored in electrical engineering. She was a graduate student at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, where she focused on biomedical engineering. For her doctoral research she worked on a microfluidic platform for the extraction of diagnostic plasma proteins. The microfluidic platform was designed to work in a clinical environment and offer the continuous monitoring of the inflammatory response of patients undergoing cardiac surgeries. The system designed by Aran comprised a two-compartment mass chamber, which allows for the continuous separation of blood plasma from blood cells with no evidence of cell lysis. A 200 nm pore size membrane can extract 15% of pure plasma at high sampling frequencies. She moved to the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

as a graduate student, where she worked on bioelectronics.

Research and career

Aran has continued to develop novel biosensing platforms. She invented the

CRISPR CRISPR () (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. These sequences are derived from DNA fragments of bacte ...

-chip, an electronic sensor that uses CRISPR-Cas to scan genomes and samples of nucleic acid for disease mutations. The chip integrates Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR) with single molecule graphene

field-effect transistor The field-effect transistor (FET) is a type of transistor that uses an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor. FETs (JFETs or MOSFETs) are devices with three terminals: ''source'', ''gate'', and ''drain''. FETs contro ...

s to generate electronic signals when CRISPR interacts with target DNA/RNA. She has demonstrated that the CRISPR-Chip can detect the mutations associated with sickle cell and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Aran is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cardea, a biotechnology company.

Awards and honors

*2020 Clinical OMICs 10 under 40 Award *2020 Athena Pinnacle Award *2021

NSF Career Award The National Science Foundation CAREER awards, presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF), are in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and education, and the integration of these endeavors i ...

*2021 ''Nature'' Research Awards for Inspiring Women in Science

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aran, Kiana Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Women bioengineers American bioengineers Claremont Graduate University faculty Rutgers University alumni City College of New York alumni