Nahid Turan, PhD

Associate Professor
VP Operations, Chief Biobanking Officer

I am an accomplished scientist with advanced degrees in biochemistry, molecular biology, and toxicology, and over six years of postdoctoral experience in human genetics and epigenetics. I have extensive expertise in biorepository management and over thirteen years of hands-on knowledge of biobanking operations. As Vice President of Operations and Chief Biobanking Officer at the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, I oversee the biobanking contract and grant management teams, the production laboratories, R&D, biobanking logistics, quality assurance, safety, and customer service. I ensure that all the departments and teams I oversee operate at the highest level of quality and efficiency, and that objectives and deliverables are achieved in a timely manner, on budget, securing Coriell’s biobanking and research interests. Coriell conducts innovative research and provides custom biobanking solutions, products and services to scientists around the globe. I help ensure that Coriell utilizes industry best practices to meet the ever-evolving needs of the scientific community we support. 

As a member of Coriell’s Executive Leadership Team since 2016, I am involved in driving the strategic mission of the Institute. I work closely with Coriell’s Executive Team to ensure the success and stability of our business operations and biobanking infrastructure. I serve as a board member for the Camden Cancer Research Center (CCRC), a collaboration between Coriell, Cooper University Hospital, and Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in NJ. I also serve as a Principal Investigator (PI) for two NIH collections at the Institute. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Repository and Genomics Resource (NRGR) serves as the largest biorepository in psychiatry and aims to help advance basic and translational research in the genetics of mental disorders. The collection currently contains over 3.5 million samples, rich clinical and multi-omic data, from more than 200,000 individuals with psychiatric illness and neurotypical controls. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Human Genetic Cell Repository at Coriell is also one of the world’s largest collections of biospecimens representing human genetic disease and diversity. As PI, I manage the scientific and business operations of these biobanks, recruit new samples, adopted process efficiency measures, identify new directions, and interface with governmental project officers and scientific advisory committee members.

Prior to becoming VP of Operations and CBO, I served as Chief Laboratory Officer and PI for both the NIGMS Repository and 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. Before joining Coriell, I was an associate scientist at the Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, PA. I completed my postdoctoral fellowships at the 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. I earned my undergraduate degree in biochemistry, an advanced degree in toxicology, and a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.