Sapna Sinha

Sapna is a Schmidt Science Fellow, who is working on opsin engineering, in particular optimizing opsins for human body expression. Sapna is leading efforts, including biomining and directed evolution of opsins that are maximally compatible with the human body, in terms of minimal immune response and maximal biocompatibility, to open up a new generation of optical input-output interfaces to and from the brain and body. 

Sapna holds a DPhil degree in Materials Science from the University of Oxford, UK, and an Engineering degree from Nagoya University, Japan. Prior to coming to MIT, she worked extensively on solid-state physics and solution phase chemistry of nanomaterials, such as graphene and carbon nanotubes, and studied their physical and electronic properties on the atomic scale.