Ihita Banik

PhD Candidate, Department of Chemical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University

Speaker

Ihita Banik is a fourth year- PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering at Penn State, working in Dr. Andrew Zydney’s lab. Her research focuses on downstream processing and purification of biopharmaceuticals, with an emphasis on filtration techniques for nucleic acid therapeutics. She develops mechanistic models and experimental strategies to optimize tangential flow filtration (TFF) processes for high-concentration siRNA formulations. Ihita has industry experience from her co-op at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, where she worked on monoclonal antibody (mAb) purification and process development. Her work integrates experimentation, modeling, and data-driven approaches to enable scalable and robust bioprocesses for next-generation therapeutic modalities.