The Department of Surgery is pleased to announce that Dr. Swathi Balaji has joined the Pediatric Surgery Research Laboratory at Texas Children’s Hospital. Balaji has also been appointed assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine.
“We are excited to welcome Dr. Balaji to the Texas Children’s Division of Pediatric Surgery,” said Dr. Jed Nuchtern, chief of the Division of Pediatric Surgery.
“Dr. Balaji’s recruitment represents a further commitment to develop a world-class research effort within the Department of Surgery,” Nuchtern said. “She has had significant scientific success by melding her bioengineering background with her interest in regenerative medicine to push the translational envelope.”
Nuchtern said the goal of her research is to understand the underlying mechanisms of how the fetus heals without scarring to achieve postnatal regenerative tissue repair in various organ systems. Balaji will be joining the Laboratory for Regenerative Tissue Repair, which is directed by surgeon-scientist Dr. Sundeep Keswani.
Balaji was most recently a postdoctoral research associate in the Division of Pediatric, General, Thoracic and Fetal Surgery at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She received her doctorate degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Cincinnati and did her postdoctoral training at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.