Huda Usman (Fed)

Huda joined the Biosystems and Biomaterials Division as an NRC Postdoctoral Researcher in January 2026, working under the mentorship of Joy P Dunkers. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, where she developed magnetically actuated nanoculture systems to encapsulate and retrieve bacteria from environmental samples for bioprospecting applications. At NIST, Huda is building upon her doctoral research by developing a robust, high-throughput microfluidic platform to encapsulate and study environmentally relevant bacteria, including soil and gut microbiome communities. Her work focuses on engineering synthetic microbial consortia and leveraging nanoculture technologies to enable high-resolution quantification and measurement of microbial dynamics. Outside of the lab, Huda enjoys exploring nature, hiking, staying active, listening to audiobooks, and unwinding with true-crime documentaries, reality TV, and Pakistani dramas.

1. National Research Council (NRC) Postdoctoral Award, NIST, 2026
2. People's Choice Award and 3rd Place in Three Minute Thesis Championship, Carnegie Mellon University, 2025
3. Toor Fellowship in Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 2024
4. 2nd Place in Oral Presentation at AIChE Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA 2024
5. Lola Ellis Robertson Endowed Scholarship, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 2023
6. Honorable Mention NSF-GRFP (2020)