| Nikta Fakhri | |
| Birth Place: | Tehran |
| Workplaces: | Georg-August-Universität Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Alma Mater: | Sharif University of Technology Rice University |
| Thesis Title: | Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Dynamics Simple and Complex Media |
| Thesis Url: | http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1031100026 |
| Website: | Fakhri lab |
Nikta Fakhri is an Iranian-American physicist who is the Thomas D. & Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research considers non-equilibrium physics in living systems.[1] She was awarded the 2022 American Physical Society Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research.
Fakhri grew up in Tehran.[2] She was an undergraduate student at the Sharif University of Technology. After completing her bachelor's degree, Fakhri moved to Rice University, where she studied carbon nanotube dynamics in complex media.[3] Her doctoral research considered the dynamics of single walled carbon nanotubes in water. Specifically, Fakhri has proposed the use of near-infrared fluorescence of carbon nanotubes as independent reporters of cellular systems.[4] Fakhri joined the Georg-August-Universität as a postdoctoral researcher.
In 2015, Fakhri joined the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she works in the physics of living systems group. In particular, Fakhri studies the processes in living and non-living matter that create non-equilibrium materials. These materials can display anomalous fluctuations, non-equilibrium phase transitions and unusual rheological properties.[5] For example, Fakhri studied the concentrations of Rho-GTP on the cell membrane of Patiria miniata. By labelling the Rho-GTP in egg cells with a fluorescent protein, Fakhri could study the cell dynamics under the microscope. She showed that protein concentration varied in waves across the protein, forming patterns with two different types of swirling vortices.[6]