Rate My Professor Kedar Aras

Kedar Aras, PhD, serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, since November 2022. He concurrently holds an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Biomedical Engineering since 2024. Aras obtained his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah in 2015, Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2006, and Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering Technology from Andrews University in 2000. Before joining UB, he completed postdoctoral training as a Research Fellow in Biomedical Engineering at George Washington University from 2015 to 2022. His early career included a role as Research and Development Engineer at Whirlpool Corporation from 2000 to 2007.

The research in Aras's laboratory centers on the contributions of intrinsic factors like autonomic dysfunction and extrinsic factors such as cardiac adiposity to cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure. Utilizing small and large animal models alongside donor human hearts, his team applies spatiotemporal multi-omics, functional and structural imaging, and multi-scale analyses from molecular to whole-heart levels to elucidate the mechanisms by which obesity and metabolic syndrome promote arrhythmias. Current projects examine epicardial adiposity's role in ventricular tachyarrhythmias and circadian clock misalignment in arrhythmia promotion using swine models and donor hearts. Aras has been honored with the National Institutes of Health Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) in 2020 and the Jos Willems Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Computerized Electrocardiology in 2014. His influential publications include "Catheter-integrated soft multilayer electronic arrays for multiplexed sensing and actuation during cardiac surgery" in Nature Biomedical Engineering (2020), "A transient, closed-loop network of wireless, body-integrated devices for autonomous electrotherapy" in Science (2022), "Photocurable bioresorbable adhesives as functional interfaces between flexible bioelectronic devices and soft biological tissues" in Nature Materials (2021), and "Electrophysiology and Arrhythmogenesis in the Human Right Ventricular Outflow Tract" in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology (2022). He recently secured $3.4 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study cardiac clock misalignment and arrhythmias.