Rate My Professor Navin Varadarajan

Navin Varadarajan is the M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston, where he also holds an adjunct appointment at the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine. He earned his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Madras in 1998, M.S. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science in 2001, and Ph.D. in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. Following his doctorate, he completed postdoctoral fellowships in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin from 2006 to 2008 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2008 to 2010. Varadarajan joined the University of Houston as an Assistant Professor in 2010, advancing to Associate Professor in 2016 and receiving the M.D. Anderson endowed professorship in 2019, with subsequent promotion to full professor. He leads the Single-Cell Lab, focusing on high-throughput technologies for profiling immune cell functions.

Varadarajan's research specializes in single-cell analysis of immune cells for advancing cancer immunotherapy, including engineering T cells and NK cells, biomarkers of T-cell efficacy, Fc receptor functions, and enzymatic tumor immunomodulation. His lab develops microfluidic devices for immune cell isolation and profiling. Key contributions include publications such as 'Multidimensional single-cell analysis identifies a role for...' (Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2022), 'Antibody Fc engineering improves frequency and promotes...' (Blood, 2014), 'Automated Classification of Apoptosis...' (IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 2020), and 'TIMING 2.0...' (Bioinformatics, 2019). He holds multiple patents, including those on single-cell cytotoxicity assessment, functional profiling of immune cells, and CAR T cell therapies. Awards include election as a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors in 2022, Cullen College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award (2018), CDMRP Peer Reviewed Cancer Career Award (2017), and Melanoma Research Alliance Established Investigator Award (2017). His work has garnered over 4,400 citations on Google Scholar, influencing immunotherapy development.