Dr. Sanjay Kumar

Biography

Sanjay Kumar is the E.H. Mary E. Pardee Professor in Bioengineering and Chemical Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the Director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). He earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1996 and completed his M.D. and Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University in 2003. Following his doctoral studies, he undertook postdoctoral training at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Kumar has been a faculty member at UC Berkeley since 2005 and chaired the Department of Bioengineering from 2019 to 2022. His research interests include biomaterials, molecular and cellular bioengineering, stem cells, and cancer biology, focusing on understanding the communication between cells and their material surroundings. He is dedicated to investigating the interactions of natural and engineered materials with cells, especially in the context of cancer stem cell biology. His team works on synthesizing new tissue-mimetic culture platforms for biological discovery and therapeutics in areas like brain cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Kumar has received several prestigious awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, NIH Director's New Innovator Award, and recognition as a fellow of AAAS, AIMBE, and BMES.

Research Interests