Doctoral student
University of Toledo
Indira Sigdel is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toledo in Ohio. She originally hails from the town of Kohalpur in Nepal. For her undergraduate studies, Indira remained in Nepal, where she completed her Bachelor of Engineering degree in Biomedical Engineering. After finishing her undergraduate studies, she joined the University of Toledo for a Ph.D. program and ultimately joined the Biofluidics Lab under her advisor Dr. Yuan Tang. For her doctoral research, Indira is focused on utilizing microfluidics technology to create physiologically relevant models of the tumor microenvironment specifically for triple-negative breast cancer. Specifically, she aims to develop microfluidic platform that can culture triple-negative breast cancer cells and normal human endothelial cells under flow conditions. This will enable the formation of three-dimensional breast tumor models that can be used to study cancer progression and test drug therapies. Her research is especially focused on testing various anti-cancer chemotherapeutic drugs on these tumor models to determine their efficacy and toxicity. The goal is to create an in vitro platform that can facilitate faster and more accurate screening of potential cancer drugs.