Dr. Prasanth Kumar

Credentials: Ph.D. in Biophysics

Position title: (2017-2022)

Prasanth, known affectionately to his lab mates as “PK” or “The Resident Expert”, graduated with a Bachelors and Masters degree from the Indian Institute of Science in 2015 and 2016, majoring in biology. For his Masters research thesis, he worked with Prof. Raghavan Varadarajan designing stabilized HIV-1 fragment immunogens towards developing a HIV-1 vaccine. His curiosity and love for proteins led him to pursue a PhD in the Biophysics department at UW-Madison. He joined the Buller lab in August 2017 hoping to learn more about protein engineering. Currently, he is working on engineering metabolic access to non-canonical amino acids, focusing on B-hydroxy amino-acids, from simple starting materials. At his leisure, he loves to lift weights and cook.