Kevin Prasad

Kevin is an enthusiastic researcher with a diverse background; he has lived in three countries—India, Indonesia, and The Netherlands—before pursuing his master’s at JHU.
He obtained his BSc from Maastricht University in The Netherlands. Kevin’s bachelor’s thesis sought to elucidate the appropriate stiffness of the cell culture substrate to convert myofibroblasts into fibroblasts. He showed that 3D-engineered heart matrices possess the ideal magnitude stiffness for transforming myofibroblasts into fibroblasts.
Kevin also led the 2021 iGEM MSP Maastricht team, which was awarded the iGEM silver medal and the prestigious National Student Engineering Award from the Royal Society of Engineers (KIVI) in the Netherlands. Before joining JHU, he interned at a biotech startup in Bangalore, India, where he learnt the workings of the business of science.

Kyriakos Papanicolaou, PhD

Kyriakos Papanicolaou, Ph.D.

Kyriakos, a native of beautiful sunny Cyprus, also comes to Hopkins by way of Boston, where he trained in the lab of Dr. Kenneth Walsh, Director of the Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute of the Boston University School of Medicine. His doctoral thesis examined the role of heart mitochondrial membrane proteins called mitofusins, particularly with respect to their influence on the mitochondrial permeability transition that marks the onset of cell death by necrosis. He also showed that mitofusins 1 and 2 are essential for postnatal metabolic remodeling in the heart. We are happy to have him on board.