Alumni spotlights

Dr. Michael Kallos, BSc (Eng)’95, PhD (Eng)’99, took chemical engineering at the Schulich School of Engineering, his hometown university, because he “really liked” math and physics—but he also had a craving for biology. 

Any potential career in oil and gas was dashed when Kallos, professor and head of Schulich’s Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), took a single course in biochemical engineering.

“I really loved it,” he says. “And I wanted to do more. I heard you could do research, but I didn’t really know what that was, so I went around and talked to different professors about what they were doing.” One of them, Leo Behie, PhD, was growing neural stem cells in his lab. Kallos was blown away: “OK, that sounds really cool!”