People
Xiaofeng Jia, MD, MS, PhD, FCCM
Principal Investigator
Xiaofeng Jia, MD, MS, PhD, FCCM, is the director of Neurosurgical Stem Cell Research and the director of the Translational Neuroengineering and Neuroscience Laboratory, a Professor of the Department of Neurosurgery, Orthopaedics, and Neurobiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and the adjunct Professor in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at University of Maryland College Park, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He has been a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, since 2007.
His current research interests include regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy, brain monitoring and therapeutic hypothermia, peripheral nerve injury and regeneration, spinal cord injury, and bone regeneration. He has been a Chartered member of the NIH ANIE study section and has been serving as an ad-hoc member of 8 NIH study sections, DOD CDMPR, USAMRDC, VA, NSFC, European Commission REA; AHA, SCCM et al.
Dr. Jia is a fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine (FCCM), a fellow member (basic science) of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) and American Association for Hand Surgery (AAHS). Dr. Jia has served as the Chair of the Research Section Steering Committee, Discovery Steering Committee, and the Discovery Oversight Committee, Scientific Review Committee member, and is a Congress Program Committee member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM). He is the section Editor in Chief of International Journal of Molecular Sciences, and the Associate Editor for Frontiers in Immunology, Frontiers in Neuroscience, and Frontiers in Neurology. He has authored 158 refereed journal papers, 90 of them as the first or corresponding author, with more than 200 invited or platform presentations, and has carried out research funded by NIH RO1, MSCRF, DARPA, AHA, et al.
He received the Annual Research Awards from AAHS in 2008. His research work was highlighted in NIH Research Matters and NIH 2015 Research Highlights. He is a recipient of the Society of Critical Care Medicine 2021, 2022, and 2023 Star Research Achievement Award.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Anam Anjum, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024
Graduation Date: PhD (2023)
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Anam Anjum, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow, 2024
Graduation Date: PhD (2023)Dr. Anjum received her PhD from The National University of Malaysia in 2023. She worked on Spinal cord injury models and nerve regeneration studies. She was awarded an excellent thesis award and was nominated for the Gold award for the University. She completed her Master's in 2017 from The National University of Malaysia.
In 2012, she was awarded a Pharm-D degree from the University of Sargodha, Pakistan, and received a Gold medal for scoring the highest marks. She also worked as a Postdoc at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland, in 2023 (6 months) on brain neuroplasticity and MMP9 activity.
She is interested in the neuronal regeneration pathways and nerve repair effects of stem cell-derived exosomes against peripheral nerve injury. Dr. Anam's primary research focus is the neuroprotection and neuroregeneration effects of extracellular vesicles or stem cells on peripheral nerve injury.
Zhulin Wang, MS, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024
Graduation Date: MS (2016), MD (2012)
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Dr. Wang obtained his Medical Doctor from Qingdao University School of Medicine and Master of Science (Cardiac Surgery) degree from Tongji University School of Medicine, China. Dr. Wang finished his residency training and fellow training in the Department of Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Shanghai Children’s Medical Center (SCMC), China. He later became an attending physician in the PICU at SCMC, gaining extensive clinical experience in treating asphyxial brain injuries in children.
Currently, He is a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Jia’s lab at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. His research mainly focuses on neuroregenerative therapies and the underlying mechanisms following brain injury related to cardiac arrest.
Meaghan Harley-Troxell, MS, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2025
Graduation Date: PhD (2025), MS (2023)
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Dr. Harley received her MS and PhD degrees from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She has a broad background in nerve tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Her research primarily focused on combining the use of carbon-based nanomaterials and stem cell therapies for nerve repair and regeneration. Currently, Dr. Harley’s primary research focus is understanding and enhancing the neuroregenerative effects of sugar-analog modified adipose stem cells for treating peripheral nerve injuries.
PhD Student
Joy Amaka Odigbo, BS
PhD Student, 2025
Graduation Date: 2024 (BS)
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Joy earned her bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, graduating summa cum laude in 2024. She gained extensive experience through internships at leading healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, including Abbott, Medtronic, and Amgen, where she developed expertise in computational modeling and hands-on research in industry settings. Joy has since shifted her focus toward stem cell therapies and is currently pursuing her PhD in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. She works as a graduate research assistant in Dr. Jia’s lab in Baltimore.
Rebecca Louisthelmy, BS
PhD Student, 2026
Graduation Date: 2022 (BS)
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Rebecca earned her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022. She conducted undergraduate research in a neural engineering lab at UMass Amherst, and went on to gain experience in science marketing and communications at Cytiva and in healthcare strategy and analytics at Royalty Pharma, where she applied data-driven methods to research on health equity. She is currently pursuing her PhD in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she works as a graduate research assistant in Dr. Jia's lab at the School of Medicine. She is interested in metabolic glycoengineering of stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles as a therapy for cardiac arrest brain injury.
Medical Student
Abel Keiji Lindley, BS
PRISM Program Summer 2025, Class of 2028
University of Maryland School of Medicine
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Abel Lindley earned his BS Phi Beta Kappa in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is currently a second-year medical student at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and has conducted bench research on stem cell-based therapies for peripheral nerve regeneration.