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Sanjay Kumar(opens in a new tab), MD, PhD, is Chancellor’s Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley. He holds joint appointments in the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 1996, Kumar earned his BS in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota, and in 2003, he earned his MD and PhD in molecular biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. He then completed postdoctoral training at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2005 and chaired the Department of Bioengineering from 2019-2022. Kumar’s research program focuses on understanding and engineering cell mechanobiology and cell-biomaterial interfaces, particularly in the context of brain cancer and stem cell technology.