Nahid Turan, PhD

Chief Biobanking Officer

As Chief Biobanking Officer at the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, Nahid oversees all biobanking contract and grant management teams, the production laboratories (Cell Culture, Molecular Biology, Stem Cell, Cytogenetics), and the Research & Development, Biobanking Logistics, Quality Assurance, Safety, and Customer Service departments.

Coriell provides custom biobanking solutions, products and services to scientists around the globe. Nahid has extensive experience in sample management and biobanking and is responsible for ensuring that all the laboratories and departments reporting to her operate at the highest level of proficiency and quality, securing Coriell’s biobanking and research interests. She is responsible for ensuring the Institute adheres to the ISO9001:2015 standard for Coriell’s quality management system and identifies best practices in the biobanking and sample management field and ensures regulatory compliance. Nahid is also in charge of identifying and developing new products and services to help meet the current and future needs of the scientific community.

As a member of Coriell’s leadership team since 2016, Nahid ensures the success and stability of business operations and biobanking infrastructure. Prior to becoming Chief Biobanking Officer, she served as Chief Laboratory Officer, Director of Laboratory Operations, and Principal Investigator (PI) for the NIGMS Human Genetic Cell Repository and the CHD GENES Biorepository, both sponsored by the NIH. In the NIGMS Repository PI role, Nahid managed the scientific and business operations of this biobank, recruited new samples, adopted process efficiency measures, identified new directions, and interfaced with governmental program officers and scientific advisory committee members. In March 2015, Nahid was awarded a $14 million U42 grant to fund the continued operations of the NIGMS Repository, through an open competition from the NIH/NIGMS. She also previously served as PI for the Congenital Heart Disease GEnetic NEtwork Study (CHD GENES) Biorepository at Coriell. CHD GENES is a multi-center, prospective observational cohort study and participants are recruited from the Pediatric Cardiac Genomics Consortium's (PCGC) centers of the NIH/NHLBI-sponsored Bench to Bassinet (B2B) Program.

Prior to joining Coriell, Nahid was an associate scientist at the Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology at Temple University School of Medicine. She completed over six years of postdoctoral training at Fels, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Fertility Clinic, employing whole genome genotyping, expression and methylation platforms, and bioinformatics to study the effect of assisted reproductive technologies on the human epigenome and transcriptome. Nahid earned her undergraduate degree in medical biochemistry, a master’s degree in toxicology in partnership with GSK UK, and a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.