Position Titles
Assistant Professor, Biological Chemistry
Member, Cell and Developmental Biology, GREAT, Neuroscience Graduate Programs
Biography
Aparna Bhaduri, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Bhaduri received her B.S. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology and B.A. in Political Science from Rice University in 2007. Dr. Bhaduri did her doctoral work in Cancer Biology at Stanford University working with Dr. Paul Khavari where she studied epidermal differentiation and epithelial cancers. While she was a graduate student, she developed her bioinformatic skill set as well as an appreciation for the inverse roles of development and cancer. She continued this line of discovery in the field of developmental neurobiology at UCSF in the lab of Dr. Arnold Kriegstein for her postdoctoral work. As a postdoc, she used single-cell RNA-sequencing to characterize the developing human brain and to compare these developmental time points to cortical organoid models of development and glioblastoma brain tumors.
Research Description
At UCLA, the Bhaduri Lab studies neural stem cell fate specification in the context of normal human cortical development and in brain tumors. The lab uses a combination of cortical organoids, tumor cell lines, and primary patient tumors to explore the emergence of heterogeneous cell types and to understand the role of the progenitor populations in cortical development and cancer. To ask these questions, the Bhaduri Lab continues to implement single-cell approaches, including to explore the transcriptome, epigenome, and metabolites.
Awards & Honors
2019 – 2022 Allen Institute Next Generation Leaders Advisory Council Member
2019 – 2020 For Women in Science Fellow, L’Oreal and AAAS
2019 K99/R00 Transition to Independence Award
