Janardan Kumar
Becker College
USA
Biography
Janardan Kumar, Professor and former chair of Natural Sciences, has earned MS in biochemistry from University of Allahabad, and, received Ph.D. in chemistry at CDRI, Lucknow affiliated to Kanpur University in India. Being research Assistant Professor in the department of Cell Biology at Duke University in 1998, he developed his research interest to the field of glaucoma and joined the internationally renowned laboratory of Prof. David L. Epstein at Duke Eye Center, Duke University, Durham, NC (USA). His work at Duke Eye Center provided opportunity to file two patents, one for glaucoma therapy and the other for vitrectomy. At TEI biosciences in 2002, he gained a unique experience on stem cell research. His strategies made him capable of inducing differentiation of insulin producing cells from adult human skin fibroblast stem cells using specific signaling complexes, and successful transplantation of these cells into three diabetic nude mice resulted of maintaining the normal glucose level for approximately a month. It is widely accepted that the major advancement of glaucoma research came only after development of the Grant perfusion system engineered by WM Grant in 1955. Since only a few laboratories are involved in the studies of fluid dynamics in enucleated eye and old tools and technology being used for the Grant perfusion system, the unique application for this equipment is not fully understood. Such an invaluable piece of equipment and expertise is almost being wiped out, and that can only be preserved by the use of real time perfusion system engineered by Kumar in 2006 during his employment at Tufts University.