Laleh Golshahi, PhD
Founder and CEO
Bio:
Dr. Laleh Golshahi is a Tenured Professor and Founding Director of the Respiratory Aerosol Research and Education (RARE) Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Her research focuses on developing anatomically informed, variability-driven models of nasal and respiratory drug deposition to support dose selection and de-risk nasal drug development, with a special interest in pediatric populations.
Dr. Golshahi led the development of the VCU Adult and Pediatric Nasal Models through a five-year collaboration with the U.S. FDA and ongoing industry partnerships. She has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and three book chapters in the fields of respiratory and nasal drug delivery.
She earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta in 2012 and joined VCU as a postdoctoral fellow in Pharmaceutics. In 2014, she was appointed to her first independent faculty position in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. She was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2021 and received an Engineering Foundation Professorship in 2022.
Dr. Golshahi has served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Aerosol Science and has received several national and international honors, including the International Society of Aerosol Medicine (ISAM) Young Investigator Award. She is also the founder of 3DInhale, an anatomically informed nasal airway platform that enables data-driven evaluation of intranasal and nose-to-brain drug delivery. By accounting for intersubject variability in nasal anatomy, 3DInhale helps developers reduce regulatory risk and accelerate product development.