Aron Parekh, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery and Biomedical Engineering as well as a member of the Program in Cancer Biology. Dr. Parekh received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. He also received his PhD in Chemical Engineering with an option in Biomolecular Transport Dynamics from the Pennsylvania State University where he was awarded the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and Weiss Graduate Scholars Fellowships. Dr. Parekh was then awarded a fellowship from the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative for postdoctoral work in the Department of Pediatric Otolaryngology at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. He subsequently obtained a fellowship from the Urologic Training Program for Physicians and Scientists for postdoctoral work in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his postdoctoral training in the Department of Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University prior to joining the Department of Otolaryngology at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center as faculty. Dr. Parekh is also a member of the Host-Tumor Interactions Research Program at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and of the Vanderbilt Center for Matrix Biology. He is also the founder and coordinator for COMPASS (Creating Opportunities For Mentoring By Peers And Social Support), a near-peer and peer mentoring group, as well as a blogger on Edge for Scholars, both of which are part of the Office of Clinical & Translational Scientist Development. He is married to Kendra Parekh, MD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, and they have two daughters.