Meet Dr. Nirosha Murugan

Bio:

Dr. Nirosha J. Murugan is Canada Research Chair in Tissue Biophysics and a Faculty of Science Distinguished Research Chair at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she leads a multidisciplinary research program investigating the physical basis of life. As an applied biophysicist, her work explores how structured physical signals – such as light, voltage, and magnetism – govern cellular plasticity, tissue regeneration, and the reversal of disease states. Her approach reframes biology not solely as a molecular system, but as a dynamic network governed by first principles in physics.

Dr. Murugan earned her Ph.D. in Biomolecular Sciences at Laurentian University, where she pioneered quantum-sensor-based technologies for non-invasive cancer detection, now commercialized through HelioFlux Inc. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Michael Levin’s lab at Tufts University, she helped establish ion-channel bioelectricity as a mechanism of tissue patterning and co-developed, in collaboration with Dr. David Kaplan, a silk-hydrogel drug delivery system to induce limb regeneration in non-regenerative species.

Her lab bridges quantum biology with biomedical engineering to decode how physical signals, acting as carriers of structured information, sculpt the body’s energetic architecture. By mapping how these signals define energy landscapes and reconfigure cellular signaling networks, her work reveals new ways to understand cell state transitions, disease emergence, and therapeutic responsiveness at both the individual and systems level.

A passionate educator and former Harvard teaching fellow, Dr. Murugan is deeply committed to mentorship and to making biophysics accessible to the next generation of health innovators. Through technology development, interdisciplinary collaboration, and entrepreneurial translation, she aims to bring the biophysics of life into real-world innovations that reprogram diseased states and support a more precise, holistic, and energetically informed model of human health.