Dr. Jain is a Shah Rising Star Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Florida (UF) with graduate and postdoctoral training in developing biomedical technologies for detecting and treating cancer and infectious diseases. After obtaining a Bachelor in pharmacy degree from India, Dr. Jain received a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) under Prof. Simon H. Friedman, where he focused on developing new light-responsive biomolecular tools to control biological processes and drug delivery and published numerous papers including in Nucleic Acids Research-2009; JACS-2011; Angewandte Chemie-2013; and Nature Protocols-2014. As a postdoc in Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia’s lab at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Jain co-developed photoactivatable in vivo protease nanosensors or ‘synthetic biomarkers’ for reliable detection of colorectal cancer in the urine (ACS Nano-2015; licensed). Dr. Jain's team was first to report a light-activated version of CRISPR/Cas9, called CRISPR-PLUS, by modifying guide RNAs for spatiotemporal control of genes in cells (Angewandte Chemie-2016).
Dr. Jain joined UF in the Fall of 2018 and in the last 4 years, Dr. Jain has established a CRISPR engineering lab focused on gene editing and diagnostics. With 12+ members (6 graduate, 6 undergraduate) in his group, his lab has already published 5 high-impact papers as a corresponding author on targeted CRISPR delivery and CRISPR-based diagnostics (Nanoscale-2019, Nature Communications-2020, Methods-2022, Communications Medicine-Nature-2022 eBioMedicine-The Lancet-2022) and 2 papers as a senior author (Nature Communications-accepted-2022, JVST-2022). In addition, his group published several preprints that are under revision, 1 book chapter-2020, 3 expert commentaries, and filed over 30 total patents (25+ pending, 2 granted, 1 licensed). Dr. Jain has already raised approximately $14.8 million over a total of 11 external grants/awards with $3.1 million received as the PI including a MIRA-R35 Award-NIH NIGMS, two R21 awards-NIH NIAID and an USDA funding. Furthermore, he has received numerous sub-awards as the Co-PI/Co-I (including R21-NIH OD, an R01-NIH NIAID, a U01-CDC, and an industry funding). Dr. Jain is a 2022 TEDx speaker and his work has been featured on the cover/frontispiece of multiple journals and has been profiled broadly by over 10,000 websites in the scientific news, blogs, and media. Dr. Jain is a co-founder of Genable Biosciences and Par Biosciences, LLC.