
Janet Moradian-Oldak
Principal Investigator
Janet Moradian-Oldak is a professor in the Division of Biomedical Sciences, Ostrow School of Dentistry, University of Southern California with a joint appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department, Viterbi School of Engineering. She has completed her B.Sc. degree in Chemistry in the Ben Gurion University, a master degree in Structural Chemistry, and a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Structural Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.
Dr. Oldak has published more than 120 articles and a few patents. Among many awards and honors Prof Oldak earned the IADR Basic Research in Biological Mineralization Distinguished Scientist Award in 2019. She is the 2019 Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She has served on many scientific organizations such as IADR, AADR, and AAAS, as well as on editorial board of Journals. She is currently the president of ICCBMT and chair of GRC in Biomineralization 2022.
(323) 442-1759

Marziyeh Aghazadeh
Research lab specialist
(323) 442-3192

Rucha Bapat
Postdoctoral Scholar - research Associate
Rucha is a dentist by training and received her Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) from Dr. D Y Patil Dental College, Pune, India. She graduated with an M.S. and Ph.D. in Craniofacial Biology from Dr. Janet Oldak’s lab in 2020. After completing a postdoc in Dr. Michael Paine’s lab at CCMB, she joined Dr. Oldak’s lab in July 2024 for her second postdoc studying the protein ameloblastin and its role in enamel formation.
(323) 442-2701

Erika Bauza Nowotny
PhD student - research assistant
Erika Bauza Nowotny graduated with a B.S. in biotechnology and an M.S. in Biology from Andrews University. In Dr. Oldak’s lab, Erika is working to further characterize an amelogenin peptide-based hydrogel and its biomineralization capabilities on enamel.
(269) 845-5207

Gayathri Visakan
Postdoctoral scholar - research Associate
Gayathri is an internationally trained dentist, passionate about studying enamel development with the aim to develop strategies to better address dental caries, and developmental enamel defects. She completed her PhD training under Dr. Oldak’s guidance during which time she developed an in vitro 3D cell culture-based system to model interactions of the enamel matrix protein ameloblastin with ameloblast cells.
(323) 442-3192

Simon Webster
research Lab TECHNICIAN II
Simon graduated with a B.S in Anthropology from University of California Riverside. In Dr. Oldak’s lab, Simon will be utilizing transmission electron microscopy to study ameloblastin and enamel formation.
(323) 442-3192
Alumni

Nahid Akhter

Scott Barlow

Saeed A. Bigdeli

Jing Cai

Amrita Chakraborty

Anna Kallistová

Natalie Kegulian

Kaushik Mukherjee

Sohaib Naim

Judith Naziri

Yeojung Park

Saumya Prajapati

Qichao Ruan

Garima Sandhu

Edwin Sarkisians

Changyu Shao
