Dr Mugdha Joglekar began her scientific career by pursuing Bachelor of Technology (Biotechnology) at Vellore Institute of Technology in India (2018). Her interest in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine flourished as she investigated gum composite scaffolds for bone tissue engineering applications as part of her thesis.

Following this, Mugdha pursued an Erasmus+ Joint Master’s Degree specialising in Medical Research at Uppsala University (Sweden) and Molecular Medicine and Innovative Treatment at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). At Groningen, she developed lung extracellular matrix hydrogels to study wound healing and cell-matrix interactions of implanted lung devices.

At the end of her Master’s, she was awarded a PhD scholarship by the Graduate School of Medical Sciences (University of Groningen). Her doctoral research focussed on unravelling the lung extracellular matrix and its interactions with immune cells in chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases.

 In December 2024, Mugdha joined MERLN as a postdoctoral researcher with a goal of developing a toolbox of synthetic hydrogels to regulate unidirectional budding of ureteric bud organoids.