Dr. Kumar obtained his Ph.D jointly from IIT Roorkee, and the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi. He has postdoctoral research experience from institutes in Sweden and Japan. He was a faculty at Lund University, Sweden, prior to his joining the BSBE department in August, 2004 as an Associate Professor.

Dr. Ashok Kumar's research focuses on the design and development of new smart polymeric biomaterials and supermacroporous matrices for different applications in biology and biotechnology. The main research interests are:

• Process development for the production of therapeutics from mammalian cell culture: In this direction his group is focusing on designing supermacroporous cryogels for the cultivation of cells and development of integrated bioprocess for the product recovery.
• Development of preparative cell separation technology, tissue engineering and high through-put analysis: By designing new superporous hydrogels, his group is focusing on developing affinity based chromatographic separation strategies for cells, scaffolds for tissue engineering and high through-put screening of biomolecules.
• Development of smart polymeric biomaterials: Self-assembling biological structures and polymers that can respond to their environment provide a wide range of interesting applications. Dr Ashok Kumar's group focus on utilizing the reversible solubility of such polymeric materials in developing bioseparation, drug delivery, biosensors, cell sheet engineering and cell culture technologies.