Dr. Govind Kaigala appointed Senior Research Scientist

Dr. Govind Kaigala has been appointed Senior Research Scientist at our Centre. Dr. Kaigala (PhD) was recruited to the UBC School of Biomedical Engineering (SBME), UBC Life Sciences Institute (LSI) and the Vancouver Prostate Center.

As a researcher across multiple institutes, Dr. Kaigala will lead and encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration between engineering, life-sciences and clinical sciences. He is passionate about developing and translating medical technology for use in the real-world and hopes to actively pursue these topics at UBC.

Dr. Kaigala joins UBC after spending the past 11 years as a scientist at IBM Research in Zurich, and leading a research team as a principal investigator. His team’s research is focused on the development and enabling of technologies for healthcare and the life sciences and has led to the development of new concepts and devices like liquid scanning probes for manipulating biological interfaces (cell, tissues etc.).

“We are excited to have Dr. Kaigala who will further strengthen and create new bridges between the School of Biomedical Engineering and challenges in clinical sciences at our center” said Dr. Martin Gleave, Executive Director of the Vancouver Prostate Centre.

Like many biomedical engineers, Dr. Kaigala came to the area of tumor profiling from another specialization - electrical engineering. It was in his PhD at the University of Alberta that he began pursuing problems at the interface of engineering and medicine. Over the years, he made a steady transition from technology-centric device work to microscale assays and is now moving towards the creation of workflows for biomedical and clinical research that include data and image analysis.