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Ashish Kulkarni
Ashish Kulkarni

Associate Professor Ashish Kulkarni of the UMass Amherst Chemical Engineering (ChE) Department is the recipient of the prestigious Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence for 2024, as presented by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The grant awards Kulkarni $67,500 to support his groundbreaking work on a revolutionary biomarker for detecting ovarian cancer in its initial stages, thereby saving countless lives. See https://www.aiche.org/about/press/releases/10-03-2024/aiche-awards-its-2024-langer-prize-ashish-kulkarni-university-massachusetts-amherst.

Kulkarni will receive the Langer Prize and present an associated lecture on October 28 during the 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting, taking place from October 27 to 31 in San Diego, California.

According to Distinguished Professor and ChE Department Head Dimitrios Maroudas, “The Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence awards funding to researchers, particularly those working in the chemical- and biological-engineering field, to follow an entrepreneurial path in tackling high-risk, high-impact challenges within a wide range of industries…Ashish’s research related to the detection and screening of ovarian cancer represents a blue-sky idea that the Langer Prize seeks to recognize and encourage.”  

The AIChE press release notes that ovarian cancer typically does not cause noticeable symptoms in its preliminary stages. As a result, it is often not diagnosed until advanced stages, making it much more difficult to treat effectively. However, when ovarian cancer is detected early, the chances of successful treatment and long-term survival increase substantially.

According to AIChE, Kulkarni’s preclinical studies have identified a biomarker that is overexpressed in the blood of patients with early-stage ovarian cancer. The discovery could potentially offer a new approach for the detection and screening of ovarian cancer, with vast improvements over existing techniques.

The AIChE article goes on to say that “Kulkarni’s research group works at the interface of engineering and immunobiology to develop innovative technologies for achieving the precise level of immune activation to treat diseases and improve human health. By bridging diverse disciplines – including nanotechnology, organic synthesis, computational chemistry, molecular imaging, mathematical modeling, and immunology – his team is creating “ImmunoTheranostic” (therapeutic + diagnostic) tools and platforms to address questions in human diseases, with a goal of developing paradigm-shifting immunotherapy strategies.”

Looking into the future, as Kulkarni says in an article posted by UMass Amherst, “Our ambitious goal is to stop working on cancer because we have cured cancer.” See https://www.umass.edu/gateway/research/stories/spotlight-scholars/ashish-kulkarni.

On a personal level, as Kulkarni says in that same article, his study of cancer was partly inspired by witnessing his own family members battle the disease. “I saw how much suffering there was and the amount of work to be done,” he says. 

As the UMass article explains, “Raised in a rural village in western India, Kulkarni grew up with limited access to resources and local opportunities for higher education. However, with unwavering determination and the support of his family, he became the first in his family to attend college, earning a degree in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai.” Later, he went on to earn his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Cincinnati.

Since coming to the UMass Amherst ChE Department in 2017, Kulkarni has earned many distinctions, including the coveted National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Young Innovator Award, the American Association for Cancer Research NextGen Star in Cancer Research Award, the Cancer Research Institute Technology Impact Award, and others. (October 2024)

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