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Sanja Vickovic

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Director of Innovation and Technology

Sanja Vicković, PhD, is a Core Faculty Member and Director, Technology Innovation Lab, at the New York Genome Center.

She holds joint appointments as an Assistant Professor at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Herbert and Florence Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics at Columbia University, and as a Wallenberg Academy Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences at Uppsala University.

Dr. Vicković is an experienced and accomplished engineer and an inventor of the spatial transcriptomic technology called “Visium” and now commercialized by 10x Genomics. In addition to being a skilled technologist, Dr. Vicković also has training and experience in mathematics and biological sciences. Prior to joining the NYGC in 2022, Dr. Vicković had already collaborated with the NYGC, playing a crucial role in the first demonstration of the application of spatial transcriptomics to a disease model in collaboration with researchers at the NYGC’s Center for Genomics of Neurodegenerative Disease.

Dr. Vicković joined the NYGC from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she was a Wallenberg Fellow in Aviv Regev’s lab. She obtained her PhD in Gene Technology from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

Research Areas

  • Cell & Tissue Engineering
  • Genomics and Computational Modeling
  • Personalized Medicine and Patient-Specific Modeling

Additional Information

  • Professional Experience
    • Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, 2022-
    • Herbert & Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cancer Data Research, Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics, 2022-
    • Wallenberg Academy Fellow at Uppsala University, 2022-
    • Wallenberg Fellow, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 2017 - 2022
    • Visiting Scientist, New York Genome Center, 2017 – 2022
    • Visiting Scientist, MIT, 2017 – 2022 
    • Postdoctoral Fellow, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, Stockholm, 2017 - 2017 
    • Graduate Fellow, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, Stockholm, 2012 - 2017 
    • Research engineer, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 2011 - 2012 
  • Professional Affiliations
    • Wallenberg Academy Fellow with the Royal Academy of Sciences and Royal Academy of Engineering
  • Honors & Awards
    • Wallenberg Academy Fellow,  2022-
    • Wallenberg Fellow for distinguished young Swedish researchers to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 2017-2022
    • Fellow, SciLifeLab, 2023-
    • Invited lecture, American Association for Cancer Research, 2024
    • Invited lecture, Max Plank Society, Max Plank Institute for Molecular Genetics, 2024
    • Invited lecture, Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, AGBT Genome Partnership, 2023
    • Invited lecture, Allen Institute for Brain Research, Annual Cell Symposia, 2022         
    • Invited lecture, Human Cell Atlas Technology working group, 2022         
    • Invited lecture, International Society for Stem Cell Research, 2022         
    • Invited lecture, Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, AGBT Genome Partnership, 2021         
    • Invited lecture, American Association for Cancer Research, 2021         
    • Klarman Cell Observatory symposia, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 2020         
    • Invited lecture, Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, AGBT Genome Partnership, 2020         
    • Invited lecture, Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, AGBT Genome Partnership, 2020         
    • Young Investigator Grant, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, 2014 - 2019     
    • Invited lecture, Human Cell Atlas, HCA, 2019         
    • Invited lecture, Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, AGBT Genome Partnership, 2019         
    • Invited lecture, Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, 2018         
    • Invited lecture, Klarman Cell Observatory symposia, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 2018         
    • Invited presentation to Broad Institute Board of Scientific Counselors, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 2018
    • Invited presentation to Klarman Cell Observatory Board of Scientific Counselors, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 2018     
    • Invited lecture, Human Cell Atlas, 2017         
    • Selected talk, Molecular Tri-Conference, 2015         
    • Shanghai Jiao Tong University Summer School scholarship, SJTU, 2014         
  • Education
    • PhD, Gene Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
    • MSc, Molecular Biomedicine, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
    • BSc, Biotechnology, University of Zagreb