M. N. V. Ravi Kumar, PhD
Distinguished University Research Professor
Dr. M.N.V. Ravi Kumar is Distinguished University Research Professor and a faculty member at the College of Community Health Sciences. Kumar was the first to propose and demonstrate non-competitive active targeting nanosystems and its application to human health and diseases. The Kumar-lab employed this platform in the treatment of difficult to treat diseases such as lupus and intraocular inflammation in rodent and canine models. His work on the next generation nanosystems has advanced fundamental understanding of blood-GUT and other biological barriers and has led to patentable technologies. These technologies not only allow product life cycle extension, but also can minimize attrition rates if applied early in the drug discovery. His fundamental platform has allowed active collaborations with others across many fields, including comparative medicine (veterinarians), opioid abuse (psychologists), HIV (immunologists), kidney dysfunction (nephrologists), obesity (nutritionists), and formulations of NCEs (medicinal chemists) that lead several high impact publications. He runs a productive laboratory, receives extramural grants, generates high-quality publications and patentable technologies, and supervises a balanced group that includes graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and undergraduate students. His research has won him several awards, including the Indian National Science Academy Medal for Young Scientists (2007); Tom Gibson Memorial Award by the British Society of Plastic Surgeons & the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (2008); British Pharmaceutical Conference Science Medal (2009); T. Nagai outstanding researcher advisor by the CRS (2018); and Distinguished Scientist Award of the International Journal of Nanomedicine (2020). He was elected a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) in 2018; elected a Foreign Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc) in 2020; and elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2020. He was recently featured on The Medicine Maker ‘Power List 20 for 2021’.