Department:
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Faculty Advisers:
Deborah Leckband, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineerng
Ning Wang, Mechanical Science and Engineering

Project Title:
Mechanotransduction at Cell-Cell Junctions

Hamid Tabdili was born in Iran and grew up in Tehran, the capital city. He received his B.Sc. degree from Sharif University of Technology in Material Science and Engineering. Later on he moved to England to continue his education in Biomedical Engineering with the focus on Biomedical Applications of Polymers at the University of Sheffield. He graduated with his M.Sc. under the supervision of Professor Short. The title of his thesis was “Nanofabrication of DNA microarray using plasma polymerization”. He then came to the U.S. for his Ph.D. studies in 2007, and he was fortunate to be accepted in Professor’s Deborah Leckband’s Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently as a Ph.D. candidate he is working on his thesis which is on mechanotransduction at intercellular junction. The main focus of his research is on studying the parameters that modulate cadherin mechanosensing mechanism. The main goals of the project are identifying the key cytoskeletal components and molecular pathways in cadherin-mediated mechanosensing, as well as investigating the potential signaling molecules that are force-dependent and/or modulate the force dependent response through cadherin. Hamid is interested in a research career in leading biotech companies. Outside his education, he is a huge fan of sports, mostly tennis and ski. He is also interested in learning new languages, and is currently studying Spanish as his third language. He is also a huge fan of poetry and Classical music.