Haaris Jilani

PhD Bioengineering @ UC Berkeley | 2024 Marshall Scholar | NSF Graduate Research Fellow

Berkeley, California, United States

About

I am currently pursuing a PhD in bioengineering at UC Berkeley; I previously completed a master's at Imperial College London and a bachelor's at Georgia Tech, both in biomedical engineering. My research has been awarded internationally and I have worked in locations across the world, including the US, Japan, Switzerland, and the UK. I hold multiple of the world's most prestigious graduate awards, including the Marshall Scholarship, United Nations Millennium Fellowship, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Amgen Scholarship, and ThinkSwiss Fellowship. Through my research, I aim to push the boundaries of human healing by developing minimally invasive biomaterial-based therapies for currently devastating musculoskeletal injuries. I have a strong and diverse research background, with expertise in biomaterial characterization, iPSC derivation, image-based tissue modeling, and gene editing. Beyond my science, I am an entrepreneur and part-time consultant. I am also an active writer and student on topics including history, Islamic theology, and mental health; my work has been published in various media. I view my career as a combination of science and service.

Experience

  • Doctoral Student at University of California, Berkeley
    Aug 2025 - Present · 1 yr

  • Graduate Researcher at Imperial College London
    Sep 2024 - Aug 2025 · 1 yr

    MRes student under Dr. Claire Higgins. Funded by Marshall Scholarship. Awarded EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership. Project: "Investigating Mechanisms of Pain and Itch in Keloid Scarring"

  • ThinkSwiss Graduate Research Fellow at ETH Zürich
    May 2024 - Jul 2024 · 3 mos

    Summer researcher under Dr. Christian Stockmann. Funded by ThinkSwiss Scholarship. Project: "Hypoxic Response in Natural Killer Cell Co-cultures"

  • Undergraduate Researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology
    Aug 2021 - May 2024 · 2 yrs 10 mos

    Undergraduate research assistant under Dr. Johnna Temenoff. Funded by President's Undergraduate Research Award (PURA) and Stamps President's Scholarship. Awarded multiple poster awards, PURA grants. Project: "Biomaterial-based Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Manufacturing".

  • Amgen Scholar at UT Southwestern Medical Center
    May 2023 - Aug 2023 · 4 mos

    Morrison Lab; Dr. Sean Morrison - Injected mice with growth inhibitors, harvested bone, blood, and organ samples from injected and control mice - Stained and imaged harvested tissue samples, analyzed changes in bone marrow cell population density in injected mice - Used microCT to determine changes in bone morphology and density in femur, tibia, spine samples of injected mice