PI

Piyush K. Jain, PhD
Shah Rising Star Professor & Associate Professor
Principal Investigator

Piyush Jain

 
About Dr. Jain
As a Shah Rising Star Professor and Associate Professor at UF, Dr. Jain’s team is developing next-generation diagnostics and genome-editing technologies. His work is routinely published in high-impact journals and has been highlighted by over 10,000 news websites including a TEDx talk. He has over 40 pending or issued patents and co-founded multiple startups. His research endeavors have been generously funded, with his projects securing 15 NIH, CDC, and USDA grants, raising substantial funding of up to $20 million. Dr. Jain has been honored with the Shah Rising Star Professorship, the UF Provost Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, and the NIH MIRA-ESI award (R35) by the NIGMS.
 
Dr. Jain received a bachelor’s in pharmacy from India and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in Prof. Simon Friedman‘s lab, where he pioneered light-responsive biochemical tools. Subsequently, as a postdoc at MIT in Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia’s lab, Dr. Jain continued to develop light-responsive nanosensors and gene-editing technologies. His work on CRISPR-based genome editors and diagnostics has been profiled broadly by over 10,000 websites in the scientific news, blogs, and media including The Conversation, Yahoo News, Google News, F1000 Prime, CBS, NBC, CBC, News Tribune, MIT News, UF News, International Business Times, TED Blog, ChemistryViews, Futurism, Sina News, Phys.org, etc.
 
Employment
  • Associate Professor, University of Florida (UF), Department of Chemical Engineering, August 2024-Present
  • Shah Rising Star Professor, University of Florida (UF), Department of Chemical Engineering, March 2021-Present
  • Assistant Professor, University of Florida (UF), Department of Chemical Engineering, August 2018-Present
  • Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, March 2018-August 2018 (Advisor: Prof. Sangeeta N. Bhatia) 
  • Postdoctoral Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, June 2013- March 2018 (Advisor: Prof. Sangeeta N. Bhatia) 
Education
  • PhD, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Pharmaceutical Sciences/Chemistry, May 2013 (Advisor: Prof. Simon H. Friedman)
  • Bachelors of Pharmacy, Dr. Hari Singh Gour University (Central University), India, June 2006

Grantsmanship

Active Research Support
  • NIH, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), R61/R33, PI: Jain (2024-2029); R61AI181016 (Total: Up to $2.8M)
  • NIH, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), MIRA R35, PI: Jain (2022-2027); R35GM147788 (Total: Approx. $1.8M)
  • NIH, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), R21, PI: Jain (2022-2025); R21AI168795 (Total: Approx. $0.4M)
  • USDA, Agricultural Research Service, NACA, PI: Jain (2022-2025); 58-6066-2-044 (Total: Approx. $0.2M)
  • NIH, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), R0, PI: Juliano (2022-2027); R01AI165537 (Total: Approx. $3.4M)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), PI: Dinglasan (2021-2026); GH002338 (Total: Up to $10M)
  • UF, Research Opportunity Seed Fund, PI: Kladde (2023-2025); 00132775 (Total: Approx. $0.1M)
  • UF, Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, PI: Jain (2024)
  • Endowment, Shah Rising Star Professorship, PI: Jain (2020-2024)
Completed Research Support
  • NIH, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), PI: Jain (2021-2024); R21AI156321, Total Award Amount: $419,375
  • UF Health Cancer Center, GU Cancers Pilot Grant, PI: Jain (2022-2024); AWD007779 (Total:$100,000)
  • NIH, Office of the Director (OD), PI: Maden (2019-2022), R21OD028211, Total Award Amount: $419,375
  • Sarepta Therapeutics, PI: Vulpe (2020-2022), AGR00018125 TO No. 3, Total Award Amount: $761,593
  • United States-India Science & Technology Endowment Fund, PI: Jain (2020-2021), USISTEF/COVID-I/247/2020, Total Award Amount: $68,027
  • Florida Breast Cancer Foundation, PI: Jain (2020-2021), P0175159, Total Award: $100,000
Selected publications

As corresponding/co-corresponding author (a full list is available here) 

  • Nguyen LT§, Rakestraw NR§, Pizzano BL, Young CB, Huang Y, Beerensson KT, Fang A, Antal SG, Anamiss KV, Peggs CM, Yan J,  Jing Y, Burdine RD, Adamson B, Toettcher JE, Myhrvold C*, and Jain PK*, Efficient Genome Editing with Chimeric Oligonucleotide-Directed Editing. bioRxiv. 2024 Jul 10:2024-07. [View] [§Equal contributions][*Corresponding authors]
  • Nguyen LT, Macaluso NC, Rakestraw NR, Carman DR, Pizzano BLM, Hautamaki RC, and Jain PK* Harnessing Non-canonical crRNAs to Improve Functionality of Cas12a Orthologs”, Cell Reports, 2024- [View][medRxiv-2021] [*Corresponding author]
  • Rananaware SR, Vesco EK, Shoemaker GM, Anekar SS, Sandoval LSW, Meister KS, Macaluso NC, Nguyen LT, and Jain, PK*, Programmable RNA detection with CRISPR-Cas12a. Nature Communications, 2023, 14 (5409), doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41006-1. [View] [Research Square, 2023] [bioRxiv, 2023] [*Corresponding author]
  • Nguyen LT§, Rananaware SR§, Yang LG§, Macaluso NC§, Ocana-Ortiz JE, Meister KS, Pizzano BLM, Sandoval LSW, Hautamaki RC, Fang ZR, Joseph SM, Shoemaker GM, Carman DR, Chang L, Rakestraw NR, Zachary JF, Guerra S, Perez A, Jain PK*, Engineering Highly Thermostable Cas12b via De Novo Structural Analyses for One-Pot Detection of Nucleic Acids Cell Reports Medicine, 2023, 4(5), 101037 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2023.101037 [View] [Highlighted on the cover] [medRxiv, 2022] [SSRN, 2023] [*Corresponding author][§Equal contributions]
  • Nguyen, LT, Macaluso N, Pizzano B, Cash M, Spacek J, Karasek J, Miller MR, Lednicky JA, Dinglasan RD, Salemi M, and Jain PK* A Thermostable Cas12b from Brevibacillus Leverages One-pot Discrimination of SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern eBioMedicine- THE LANCET, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.103926 [*Corresponding author] [medRxiv] [Preprints with THE LANCET] [Download pdf] [View]
  • Nguyen, LT, Rananaware SR, Pizzano BLM, Brandon ST, and Jain PK* Clinical validation of engineered CRISPR/Cas12a for rapid SARS-CoV-2 detection. Communications Medicine- Nature, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-021-00066-4 [*Corresponding author] [Download pdf] [View]
  • Nguyen, LN, Smith, BM, Jain PK* Enhancement of trans-cleavage activity of Cas12a with engineered crRNA enables amplified nucleic acid detection Nature Communications, 2020, 11, 4906 [*Corresponding author] [Download pdf] [View] [BioRxiv version]
  • Jain PK*, Lo JH, Rananaware S, Downing M, Panda A, Tai M, Raghavan S, Fleming HE and Bhatia SN*. Non-viral delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 complex using CRISPR-GPS nanocomplexes. Nanoscale, 2019; 11, 21317-21323 [*Co-corresponding author]  [Download pdf] [View]
Selected Honors and Awards
  • UF Provost Excellence Award for Assistant Professors (2023)
  • UF HWCOE Excellence Award for Assistant Professors (2023)
  • NIH-NIGMS MIRA, Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (2022)
  • TEDx Speaker (2022)
  • Shah Rising Star Professorship (2021-Current)
  • Dissertation Research Fellowship (2011-2012)
  • Preparing Future Faculty Fellowship (2008-2011) 
Courses Taught

Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville FL, USA

  • Introduction to Biomolecular Engineering (BME3406)
    • Fall 2022, Fall 2023
  • Biology for Engineers (ABE2062)
    • Fall 2021
  • Pharmaceutical BioEngineering (ECH4905, ECH6937)
    • Spring 2019, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
  • Material and Energy Balance (ECH3023)
    • Fall 2018, Spring 2020
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