Nikta Fakhri is an Iranian-American physicist who is the Thomas D. & Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. Her research considers non-equilibrium physics in living systems. She was awarded the 2022 American Physical Society Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research.

Early life and education

Fakhri grew up in

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

. She was an undergraduate student at the

Sharif University of Technology Sharif University of Technology (SUT; fa, دانشگاه صنعتی شریف) is a public research university in Tehran, Iran. It is widely considered as the nation's most prestigious and leading institution for science, technology, engineering ...

. After completing her bachelor's degree, Fakhri moved to

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

, where she studied carbon nanotube dynamics in complex media. Her doctoral research considered the dynamics of single walled carbon nanotubes in water. Specifically, Fakhri has proposed the use of

near-infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of Light, visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from ...

fluorescence of carbon nanotubes as independent reporters of cellular systems. Fakhri joined the Georg-August-Universität as a postdoctoral researcher.

Research and career

In 2015, Fakhri joined the faculty at

, where she works in the physics of living systems group. In particular, Fakhri studies the processes in living and non-living matter that create non-equilibrium materials. These materials can display anomalous fluctuations, non-equilibrium phase transitions and unusual rheological properties. For example, Fakhri studied the concentrations of Rho-GTP on the cell membrane of '' Patiria miniata''. By labelling the Rho-GTP in egg cells with a fluorescent protein, Fakhri could study the cell dynamics under the microscope. She showed that protein concentration varied in waves across the protein, forming patterns with two different types of swirling vortices.

Awards and honors

* 2016 Human Frontier Science Program Organization Career Development Award * 2017 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship * 2018 Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor * 2018 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Biological Physics * 2019 National Science Foundation CAREER Award * 2019 Kavli Foundation Frontiers Scholar * 2022 American Physical Society Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fakhri, Nikta Living people Scientists from Tehran Sharif University of Technology alumni Rice University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Iranian emigrants to the United States 21st-century American physicists Iranian women physicists Year of birth missing (living people)