Ashutosh Kumar

Ashutosh Kumar is a PhD student whose research investigates the interactions between cancer and the bacteria that inhabit certain cancer cells and cancer tumors and the role that bacteria may play in chemotherapy resistance and modulating responses to immunotherapy. Specifically, Ashutosh is researching bacteria associated with ovarian cancer, with the goal of improving detection and treatment for this lethal form of cancer through a deeper understanding of this population of bacteria. Supported by a MathWorks Fellowship, Ashutosh will apply a combination of experimental techniques, microbiome sequencing, and artificial intelligence to attempt to predict microbial-based biomarkers and cluster them based on cancer types to understand changes in the microbiome, which can be correlated to poor patient outcomes. His research, which draws heavily on MathWorks toolkits, is yielding novel observations on the effects of bacteria on cell growth, cell adhesion, migration, and cytoskeleton organization and has the potential to offer additional new insights into the mechanics of cancer metastasis, for improved diagnostics and therapeutics.