Revathi Manoharaan
Graduate Research Associate
Department of Bioengineering
Revathi Manoharaan is a 5th-year PhD candidate in the Bhargava Group studying how microenvironmental stresses drive phenotypic adaptation in breast cancer. Her research deconstructs the tumor microenvironment into chemical stress (hypoxia), biophysical cues from the extracellular matrix, and cell–cell interactions to understand their roles in tumor invasion, migration, and immune interactions.
She has developed a tunable synthetic extracellular matrix (sECM) and standardized single-spheroid tumor models to resolve heterogeneity in 3D culture systems. Using this platform, she decouples key mechanochemical and biological properties of the extracellular matrix to study metastatic behavior, and functionalizes the sECM with sensing capabilities to build a Tumor–Immune Microenvironment (TIME) chip for real-time signaling analysis. Her broader interest lies in simplifying and reconstructing the tumor microenvironment to uncover its systemic role in cancer progression.
Prior to joining the Bhargava Group, she earned her Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.