---
title: "Nikhil Malvankar"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Nikhil S. Malvankar"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
connects_to: ["Geobacter sulfurreducens","microbial nanowires","cryo-electron microscopy","Derek Lovley","Edward Egelman"]
---


Biophysicist (Yale) whose lab, working with cryo-EM structural biologist Edward
Egelman, resolved the structures that overturned the *Geobacter* conductive-pili
model — showing the conductive filaments are polymers of the cytochrome OmcS
(*Cell*, 2019) and that the PilA pili are periplasmic secretory pseudopili
(*Nature*, 2021). Matters to this vault as the second pole of the *Geobacter*
nanowire dispute: originally trained within Derek Lovley's research lineage, he
became senior author on the two model-overturning papers, neither of which lists
Lovley as a co-author.

## References
- [[claim-geobacter-conductive-filaments-are-omcs-cytochrome-polymers]]
- [[claim-geobacter-pili-are-secretory-pseudopili-not-nanowires]]
- [[claim-malvankar-lab-overturned-pili-model-without-lovley]]