Faculty

Tuberculosis remains a threat to global health, killing ~2 million people every year. The causative agent of tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is thought to infect one third of world's population, sickening ~10 million people a year. Despite efforts to simplify treatment strategies, tuberculosis still requires months of multi-drug therapy to cure. We merge engineering and molecular approaches to develop quantitative descriptions of the determinants of mycobacterial stress tolerance and virulence. Our approach is motivated by our recent finding that the asymmetric growth pattern of mycobacteria creates subpopulations of cells with different growth parameters and tolerance to antibiotic treatment. We are building a multidisciplinary research group that couples quantitative single-cell measurements and mathematical modeling with the goal of shortening and simplifying treatment regimens against tuberculosis.

I no longer maintain an active research laboratory and do not accept dissertation students. I remain active in teaching, mentoring and other graduate program activities. My research focused on excessive proliferation of smooth muscle cells, a hallmark of many diseases, including atherosclerosis, restenosis following vascular surgery, hypertension, fibroids, asthma, and several congenital defects.

Mathematical models of material behavior; Nonlinear magneto- and electromechanical interactions; Biomechanics of soft materials; Rubber elasticity and inelasticity

Dendritic cells found in the eye with special emphasis on the function of these cells in corneal transplantation, neurotrophic keratitis, and herpetic keratitis Clinical trials that use confocal microscopy in various types of infectious keratitis and dry eye disease

Education: Seeking excellence in orthopedic education through the AO Foundation's Faculty Education Program. Orthopedics: Bone and cartilage growth and remodeling, repair in response to injury, and grafting. Skeletal tissue engineering. Bone and soft tissue biomechanics. Bone inductive and mitotic proteins. Ligament and tendon physiology and response to injury. Orthopedic device development. Animal models of orthopedic disease. Equine podiatry. Joint disease and interventions. Cardiovascular: Percutaneous treatment of cardiac disease. Animal models of cardiac disease. Interventional cardiology.

Bioorganic Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Prof. Kumar and his group are involved in areas of research that lie at the interface of chemistry and biology. The main goal of the research is to use chemical and biological methods to create novel and functional molecules that allows us to understand the mechanism of, and/or control biological processes. His group uses the traditional techniques of organic chemistry, such as synthesis and spectroscopy, of biological chemistry, such as recombinant DNA technology, protein purification and enzyme kinetics, and of biophysics, including investigation of protein structure in membranes. Current projects in his laboratory focus on: De novo protein design and evolution; Combating bacterial resistance to antibiotics; Understanding the origin of the intron-exon gene structure of modern day enzymes; Catalysis by small molecules and peptides; and Design of membrane protein architectures for specialized functions.

Morphological and behavioral information processing in living systems

Signal and image processing, tomographic image formation and object characterization, inverse problems, regularization, statistical signal and imaging processing, and computational physical modeling. Applications explored include medical imaging and image analysis, environmental monitoring and remediation, landmine and unexploded ordnance remediation, and automatic target detection and classification.

Engineering for Health, Mechanics of biomaterials at the nanoscale, Synthesis and study of functionals nanomaterials for biomedical imaging and drug delivery, Advanced imaging for medical diagnostics, Novel processes and materials for dentistry: nano-polishing and self-healing materials

Flexible bioelectronics, Biomedical microdevices, Biomedical circuits and systems, micro and nano fabrication, lab-on-chip microsystems, global health and precision medicine, CMOS image sensors for scientific imaging, analog to information converters, active metamaterial devices, circuits, and systems, terahertz devices and circuits

Control of locomotion and the neural processes that organize sensory and motor information

Synthetic Biology, Chemical Biology, Protein Engineering, Antibody Engineering, Drug Discovery, Genetic Code Expansion, Noncanonical Amino Acids, Tumor Microenvironment.

Research in my laboratory focuses on mineralized tissue development, homeostasis, disease and regeneration. Our research models include the zebrafish, Danio rerio, mammalian models including pig, mouse and rat, human healthy and diseased tissues, and three dimensions (3D) in vitro and in vivo tissue engineering models for human cartilage, bone and tooth tissue engineering.