{"id":247205,"date":"2026-06-04T11:45:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=247205"},"modified":"2026-06-04T12:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:36:11","slug":"uconn-pharmacy-assistant-research-professor-wins-excellence-in-research-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/06\/uconn-pharmacy-assistant-research-professor-wins-excellence-in-research-award\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Pharmacy Assistant Research Professor Wins Excellence in Research Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vikas Kumar is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences under the supervision of Raman Bahal, Professor of Pharmaceutics.<\/p>\n

Kumar graduated from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR-IIIM) in Jammu, India, with a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences in 2020.<\/p>\n

Kumar then pursued his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine in Bengaluru, India, from January 2020 to July 2020. In August 2020, Kumar began his studies at UConn in Bahal\u2019s lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, a position he held until August 2025.<\/p>\n

Kumar\u2019s research focuses on delivering nucleic acids to specific kidney cells, which constitute over 60 percent of the kidney\u2019s mass and are the primary injury site in many renal diseases.<\/p>\n

Kumar\u2019s research is currently in the preclinical stage, which assesses a treatment\u2019s safety, toxicity, and effectiveness to determine whether it is ready for clinical trials.<\/p>\n

Kumar\u2019s research was recently selected for the Excellence in Research Award for the 2026 American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) Annual Meeting.<\/p>\n

\"Man
Vikas Kumar holding his award at the ASGCT Annual Meeting<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kumar was surprised when he won the award.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was hard to believe at the time,\u201d Kumar said. \u201cIt was a very humbling feeling, and it motivated me after receiving it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bahal praised Kumar for his research.<\/p>\n

\u201cKumar is an exceptional research scientist who works diligently and intelligently to address complex scientific challenges,\u201d Bahal said. \u201cI am very pleased that he received this distinguished recognition from ASGCT.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award meant a lot to Kumar as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked consistently on this for the last three to four years, focusing on targeted delivery, particularly to the kidneys, and at that time we didn\u2019t realize that the effort would be so meaningful in the end,\u201d Kumar said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to explain, but I feel happy overall.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award was very competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey mainly look into the depth of analysis and significance of the research done to decide the winners, and there are about 10 winners each year from researchers working in different domains of gene and cell therapy, depending on certain criteria,\u201d Kumar said.<\/p>\n

The challenging part of Kumar\u2019s research was developing the things he needed to start.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we are developing a targeted drug delivery platform, we have to do extensive optimization studies,\u201d Kumar said. \u201cWe have to figure things out, like whether our approach can deliver the drugs to the right cell type, and whether we can safely achieve the therapeutic effect without any toxicity in other parts of the body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kumar was awarded the Excellence in Research Award at the ASGCT annual meeting from May 11-15 in Boston, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vikas Kumar, a UConn School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Assistant Research Professor, won the Excellence in Research Award for the 2026 American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASCGT) Annual Meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":247207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2715],"class_list":["post-247205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pharm"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 14:00:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247209,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247205\/revisions\/247209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/247207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247205"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=247205"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=247205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}