Alumni spotlight
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Michael Kallos PhD’99 (Chemical Engineering)
Growing stem cells, biomedical engineering community and life sciences industry professor and alum, Michael Kallos, excited about the “tonne of opportunity”
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!”
It's been amazing and so much fun to see all the opportunities the students have now. I’m excited for the future. We've got so many cool new faculty that are doing amazing things. Keep your eye on us.
Michael Kallos PhD’99 (Chemical Engineering)
Three decades later, the Kallos lab is growing different types of stem cells, including a sort of blank slate cell, called induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS). “Basically, you can turn a skin cell or a blood cell into a stem cell that behaves like an embryonic stem cell and can form any cell type in the body, but doesn't have any of the kind of moral, ethical, supply type problems that embryonic stem cells have,” he says.
As well as growing stem cells, Kallos—the founding head of the new Department of Biomedical Engineering–has been instrumental in expanding the BME and life sciences community in Calgary and across the province. “The focus on life sciences in Alberta has never been greater,” he says. “There's a tonne of opportunity for a much richer ecosystem here. It's going to continue to grow.”
A key component of that ecosystem is Schulich’s new BSc and MEng programs, which add to the 25-year-old master's and PhD programs in biomedical engineering. “We have brand new teaching labs, we've hired a number of faculty. We have a real community of people in engineering working on a wide range of projects.”
The BME Graduate Program is shared between six faculties: engineering, medicine, kinesiology, veterinary medicine, science and nursing. “We’ve always been transdisciplinary,” says Kallos. “No one can do anything alone anymore. You've got to be able to identify the right problem and work with multiple different disciplines to find a solution. BME is a great meeting place for all sorts of different people to come together and solve health problems.”
Those problems include more personalized drugs and medical devices, as well as regenerative medicine solutions. “Say a 12-year-old injures their knee and needs surgery every 10 years as they grow, you could place stem cells that will grow as they grow. It's living, it grows with you, it changes with you, as opposed to drugs, which alleviate symptoms and mechanical devices, which do not adapt as you change,” he says.
These days, Kallos spends a lot of time talking with life sciences companies about the researchers and facilities at Schulich with an eye to attracting more industry and investment.
BME has come a long way since Kallos went knocking on professors’ doors in his undergrad. “It's been amazing and so much fun to see all the opportunities the students have now,” he says. “I’m excited for the future. “We've got so many cool new faculty that are doing amazing things. Keep your eye on us.”