Sanjay Kumar
Biologist Faculty Scientist
Biography
Sanjay Kumar, M.D., Ph.D., was appointed Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley in 2005, promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011, and promoted to Full Professor in 2014. He is also Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley and a Faculty Scientist in the Biological Systems & Engineering Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Kumar is an elected Fellow of AIMBE and BMES. He and his research group have been fortunate to receive a number of honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), The NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Stem Cells Young Investigator Award. Dr. Kumar has also received awards by student vote for Excellence in Graduate Advising (UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering) and Outstanding Teaching (Bioengineering Honor Society) and has served as a Presidential Chair Teaching Fellow. Work in his laboratory has been sponsored by grants and fellowships from NIH, NSF, DOD, AHA, CRCC, LBNL, CIRM, The Beckman Foundation, the Keck Foundation, the Siebel Scholars Program, the DOE Molecular Foundry and the University of California.
Dr. Kumar earned a B.S. in chemical engineering (1996) from the University of Minnesota, where he studied lipid self-assembly in the laboratory of Matt Tirrell. He then moved on to Johns Hopkins University, where he earned an M.D. (2003) and a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics (2003) as a fellow of the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program. During the graduate portion of his training, he investigated the structure and energetics of neuronal intermediate filaments in the laboratories of Jan Hoh of the School of Medicine and Mike Paulaitis of the Department of Chemical Engineering. From 2003-2005, he served as an NIH research fellow with Don Ingber at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, where he examined the nanoscale mechanics and dynamics of cytoskeletal structures in living cells and developed nanomagnetic technologies to control receptor-mediated signaling.
Research Interests
Our research team seeks to understand and control biophysical communication between cells and their surroundings. In addition to investigating fundamental aspects of this problem, we are especially interested in understanding the role played by cellular mechanobiological signaling in tumor and stem cell biology in the central nervous system.
Recent Publications
Related News
Three from Biosciences Area Named AAAS Fellows
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which was founded in 1848 and is the world’s largest general scientific society, announced that 489 of its members—among them nine scientists at Berkeley Lab—have been named Fellows. This lifetime honor, which follows a nomination and review process, recognizes scientists, engineers, and innovators for their distinguished achievements toward the advancement or applications of science. The three newly named Fellows from the Biosciences Area are: Sanjay Kumar, a faculty scientist in the Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) Division; Mary Maxon, the Associate Laboratory Director for the Biosciences Area; and Len Pennacchio, a senior scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) Division and the Deputy of Genomic Technologies at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI).
Brown Fat Flexes its Muscle to Burn Energy—and Calories
A multidisciplinary team of bioengineers and metabolic researchers led Andreas Stahl, a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences & Toxicology at UC Berkeley, has figured out a new pathway that triggers brown fat to consume calories and radiate them away as heat. Sanjay Kumar, a faculty scientist in Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) and assistant professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley, was a co-author on the study published March 6 in Cell Metabolism. One unexpected finding was that muscle-like myosin is responsible for causing brown fat cells to stiffen in response to signals from the brain; it is this increased tension that triggers a biochemical pathway that ends with these cells burning calories for heat. “This study offers a remarkable example of how mechanical and other physical forces can influence physiology and disease in powerful, unexpected ways,” Kumar said. Understanding how brown fat is activated could unlock new ways to combat obesity. Read more from UC Berkeley News.
‘Tug of War’ Among Skin Cells Key to Development of Chicken Feathers
Sanjay Kumar, a Berkeley Lab faculty scientist in Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE), and Elena Kassianidou, a graduate student working in his lab, are co-authors on a UC Berkeley-led study published in the journal Science which for the first time linked mechanical forces acting on skin cells in a developing organism to the activation of specific genes that make the cells differentiate into more specialized types, such feathers. The researchers grew skin taken from week-old chicken eggs on artificial substrates generated by Kumar and Kassianidou to mimic the stiffness of tissues that underlie the skin in the bird. The work could pave the way to growing artificial skin for grafts that looks like normal human skin with proper spacing of hair follicles and sweat pores. Read more from the UC Berkeley News Center.
