Melika Hajimohammadi

Melika Hajimohammadi

Graduate Research Associate

Department of Bioengineering

Melika is a Ph.D. student in Bioengineering at UIUC. She earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from the University of Tehran in 2019 and 2022, respectively. As a visiting scholar at ETH Zurich, she conducted her master’s research on capacitive aptasensing for monitoring neurotransmitters.

In the Bhargava group, her work centers on developing 3D tumor models to investigate breast cancer progression and metastasis. She optimizes culture systems to better mimic the tumor microenvironment, specializing in spheroid development and process refinement. By integrating imaging techniques with statistical modeling, she enhances experimental reproducibility.

Melika also collaborates on automated platforms for studying tumor cell behavior, aiming to improve preclinical research methodologies and accelerate therapeutic development.

4121 Beckman Institute