Rate My Professor Navin Varadarajan

Navin Varadarajan is the M.D. Anderson Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006, M.S. in Organic Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science in 2001, and B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Madras in 1998. After completing his doctoral studies, Varadarajan conducted postdoctoral research in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2008 to 2010 and additional postdoctoral work at the University of Texas. He joined the University of Houston in 2010 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2016, and elevated to his current endowed professorship recognizing his contributions to the field.

Varadarajan's research specializes in single-cell analysis, cancer immunotherapy, and proteases. Directing the Single-Cell Lab, his group develops high-throughput microfluidic assays and imaging platforms, such as the TIMING process, to quantify dynamic immune cell interactions, T cell cytotoxicity, and antigen-specific responses at the single-cell level. These tools enable functional profiling of immune responses in cancer, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases, facilitating the engineering of therapeutic antibodies, enzymes, and vaccines. His work has led to over 4,400 citations on Google Scholar and commercialization efforts, including co-founding CellChorus to advance single-cell immune profiling technologies and licensing intranasal vaccine platforms to AuraVax Therapeutics for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza prevention. Varadarajan was elected a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors in 2022 and received the Stewart R. Rahr Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award in 2013. He has secured significant funding, including a Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas grant, and holds multiple patents in biotechnology.