Rachel Sirianni

Dr. Sirianni received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University in 2008. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Diagnostic Radiology at the Yale School of Medicine. In 2011, she joined the Barrow Brain Tumor Research Center at Barrow Neurological Institute to launch a translationally oriented drug delivery research program in Neuro-Oncology. Her laboratory is interested in designing polymeric nanoparticles that solubilize and slowly release chemotherapeutics to improve drug action in the central nervous system. Dr. Sirianni’s research is focused on a number of translational goals, including nanoparticle formulation for effective drug loading and release, quantitative imaging to track nanoparticle delivery, development of polymeric scaffolds to model microenvironmental drivers of tumor response to treatment, and local delivery of drugs and nanocarriers to the cerebrospinal fluid to target metastatic and infiltrative pediatric brain tumors. Dr. Sirianni is currently in the process of relocating her laboratory to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where she will focus her research program exclusively on drug delivery and tissue engineering in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology.