Hamed Naghsh-Nilchi is a second-year PhD student working with Dr. Zeinab Jahed in the Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering and co-mentored by Dr. Padmini Rangamani in the Department of Pharmacology. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in Bioengineering from UCLA, where he worked on microfluidics and biomaterials development, and, prior to UCSD, he was an R&D engineer at Miltenyi Biotec, contributing to next-generation cell-sorting technologies. His research focuses on nuclear mechanics and engineering nanotopographies that induce controlled, transient nuclear poration to enable direct, non-viral cargo delivery to the nucleus, with downstream applications in mechanobiology assays and gene/protein delivery. Outside of the lab, he’s an avid café-seeker for a proper cappuccino, enjoys cooking new recipes, and is a rapid/blitz chess puzzle enthusiast. He recharges with sci-fi series, novels, self-improvement reads, and history podcasts, ideally paired with a long walk.