Govind Nair PhD

Govind Nair (Bhagavatheeshwaran) earned his Bachelor of Technology in Biomedical Engineering from Cochin University of Science and Technology in India and his Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia. He earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and University of Massachusetts where he studied and developed Magnetic Resonance Imaging techniques for imaging the retina. During his postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Xiaoping Hu and Michael Benatar at Emory University, he worked on developing specialized magnetic resonance imaging techniques and markers of disease progression in patients affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He joined the National Institutes of Health in 2011 as a Staff Scientist, and directs the quantitative MRI core facility at the NINDS.

Dr. Nair’s research focuses on techniques to improve the sensitivity and specificity of MRI in detecting changes in the neuronal microenvironment in neuroinflammatory diseases, which could help with understanding disease processes in-vivo. At present, his research focuses on developing quantitative MRI markers of disease progression in neuroinflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Human T-cell leukemia virus, type 1 or HTLV-1 associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP), Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), disorders with neurovascular involvement such as CADASIL and COVID-19, as well as neurocognitive impairments in HIV infection.