Shivani SoniShivani Soni joined as a lecturer at Chapman University and California State University, Fullerton in Fall 2016. She worked as an associate professor in Department of Biological sciences at Alabama State University till July 2016.She left her job at labama State University to be with the family in CA. Her husband Dr. Amandeep Salhotra and 5 year old son Mr. Shivam Salhotra lives in Southern CA. Dr. Soni obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Zoology from University of Delhi, India. She completed her PhD in Molecular Parasitology in 2004 from University of Delhi, India. Her PhD thesis entitled “Selection of antimalarial resistant lines of Plasmodium yoelii and sporogonic studies in Anopheles stephensi ” focused on the currently important global public health problem of emergence of resistance to existing antimalarial drugs, which is a major setback to malaria control in the developing world.She received her postdoctoral training with Dr. Manjit Hanspal at Tufts School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts. Later she joined as a senior postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Shiladitya Sengupta at Health Science & Technology division of Harvard Medical School-MIT, Boston, Massachusetts. Her research interests are in the area of Hematology and Oncology. Her research has focused in the field of erythropoesis (Red blood cell formation), where she demonstrated the role of a novel protein Emp (Erythroblast Macrophage Protein) in red blood cells and macrophage development. Emp was discovered by Dr. Hanspal in 1994 and Dr. Soni was the first one to characterize its function in vivo in 2006 This has resulted in multiple high impact publications and a prestigious travel award from American Society of Hematology. Additionally, she had also explored events preceding the release of malarial parasite from RBC’s as an extension of her PhD work. Her current research work is to elucidate the role of Emp in colorectal cancer progression and to explore its value as predictive & prognostic biomarkers. She had successfully acquired NIH grant for this project. Her another project focuses on developing strategies that can be applied into clinico-pathological conditions related to abnormal erythropoiesis, cell-to-cell adhesion & migration. Another part of her research in the area of Oncology involves engineering concepts pertaining to biological systems. In collaboration, she has developed several novel polymeric hybrid nanoformulations for cancer chemotherapy and targeting aberrant signal transduction pathways which has led to many publications in peer reviewed journals as well as patents. Dr. Soni is the reviewer of many journals related to Hematology, Oncology and Biochemistry. Read More Read Less