Krishna Kumar is Robinson Professor of Chemistry, Chairman of the Chemistry Department and Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University. He is a Member of the Cancer Center at the Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1996 and after postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Research Institute joined Tufts in 1998. Kumar’s contributions to science, and in particular chemistry and medicine, have been recognized widely. He was named a DuPont Young Professor, recognized as one of the top 35 young innovators in the world by MIT Technology Review magazine (TR35), awarded a Global Indus Technovator award from MIT-IBC, is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, Technology award from the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center, Excellence in Chemical Sciences Award from the Indian Society for Chemistry and Biology and was elected a Fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His contributions to science range from the origin of life, peptide and protein design, medicinal chemistry, biophysics and cell and molecular biology. In particular, he is credited with creating "non-stick" proteins and cells, imaging lipid rafts, and developing therapeutics for a wide range of infectious and metabolic diseases.