Diversity in Life Sciences

Dr. Novalia (Nova) Pishesha grew up in Indonesia as the daughter of toy shop owners with no formal high school education. Recognized early for her academic talents, she emigrated to the United States alone to pursue higher education. Nova attended the University of California, Berkeley, on a full-ride scholarship and later earned her PhD in Biological Engineering at MIT under the mentorship of Drs. Harvey Lodish and Hidde Ploegh. After PhD, Nova was elected as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, where she continued her research with Dr. Ploegh and received additional mentorship from Dr. Aviv Regev at the Broad Institute/MIT and Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia at the Koch Institute/MIT. Her work has laid the foundation for two biotech companies, including Cerberus Therapeutics, which she co-founded in 2022. Nova has been honored with several awards, including the MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 (Asia Pacific) and the STAT+ Wunderkind by The Boston Globe. She is also the recipient of the National Multiple Sclerosis Foundation Career Transition Award and the Rheumatology Research Foundation Innovative Award. In January 2024, she launched her own lab as an Assistant Professor in the Division of Immunology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, focusing on advancing immune engineering to combat pathogenic immunity.