Assistant Professor
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Dr. Susmita Sil is an Instructor at the Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Neuroscience, University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). She has completed her PhD from University of Calcutta, India and joined as a post-doctoral research associate with Prof. Shilpa Buch in 2016 at UNMC, and soon after that was promoted as an Instructor in 2019. Her pre-doctoral research work mainly focused on the cyclooxygenases mediated mechanism(s) of neurodegeneration and cognitive impairments in sporadic rat model of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Her post -doctoral training continued to build on her previous training in behavioral studies and neurodegeneration in drug addicts and HIV associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). As an instructor, her interest is to investigate the effects of different drugs of abuse and HIV on the mechanisms involved in glial cells mediated neurodegeneration involving cellular-crosstalk by extracellular vesicles. Some of her recent studies focused on the HIV associated co-morbidity of AD. She has shown that HIV/ HIV Tat protein can induce astrocytic amyloidosis through a novel interaction of hypoxia inducible factor-1 with long non-coding RNA BACE1-AS, which has been recently accepted for publication in Plos Biology. Her long-term goal is to contribute towards the therapeutics of neuroHIV and other neurodegenerative diseases, mainly targeting the protein-DNA-RNA complexes involved in the pathogenesis. Dr. Sil have published 22 articles (15 first authored) in peer reviewed journals. She has received several academic and professional honors in her career including Early Career Investigation Travel Award from Society for Neuroimmune Pharmacology (2017 & 2018), Young Scientist Award Grant at Exosomes at Human Infectious Diseases Conference, Bahamas, 2020 and many more. She have been also awarded with two pilot grants from John Hopkins University (R25) and Nebraska Center for Substance Abuse, respectively. She have been mentoring summer and graduate students for their summer project dissertation and lab rotations.