Natasha Diba Sheybani, Ph.D.

Bio

"We are working at the nexus of therapeutic ultrasound, advanced imaging, and tumor immunology to design and deploy precision cancer immunotherapy paradigms."

Natasha Sheybani, PhD

Dr. Sheybani leads a translational research program centered on innovating tools and paradigms for non-invasive precision cancer management. Specifically, her group seeks to advance the role of focused ultrasound (FUS) - a disruptive, emerging strategy for non-invasive, non-ionizing, and precisely targeted deposition of acoustic energy into tumor tissues – for immuno-modulation and immunotherapy delivery in solid cancers of the brain and periphery (e.g. glioblastoma, metastatic breast cancer). With the goal of ushering image-guided therapies like FUS into the burgeoning era of precision immuno-oncology, Dr. Sheybani’s lab also applies approaches in systems biology and imaging informatics to advance the role of other non-invasive strategies like liquid biopsy and multimodality imaging techniques (e.g. MRI, immuno-PET), respectively, with the intent of informing risk stratification, therapeutic monitoring, and individualized treatment paradigms involving FUS and/or cancer immunotherapy. The work of the Sheybani lab interfaces closely with multiple ongoing clinical trials at UVA that are evaluating FUS immunotherapy in metastatic breast cancer and other solid tumor settings.

Natasha Sheybani earned her B.S. (with Honors) in Biomedical Engineering as a Eugene P. Trani Scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University. She then completed her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia, with the support of an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and Robert R. Wagner Fellowship. As a graduate student, she also became UVA’s first recipient of The NCI Predoctoral-to-Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award (F99/K00). Dr. Sheybani completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Oncology, Biomedical Data Science and Radiology at Stanford School of Medicine, and in tandem, served as a Senior Scientist at the Focused Ultrasound Foundation. In 2021, Dr. Sheybani returned to UVA BME under the support of an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (DP5). Dr. Sheybani holds courtesy appointments in Radiology & Medical Imaging and Neurosurgery at UVA, as well as a Visiting Instructorship in Oncology at Stanford. She has been previously recognized in health news website STAT’s annual list of Wunderkinds and, in 2022, was elected to Forbes Magazine's "30 Under 30" List in Science.

Join Us
The Sheybani Lab is currently recruiting at all levels. Interested candidates are encouraged to reach out to Dr. Sheybani directly at sheybani@virginia.edu.