We are a research team based at The University of British Columbia (UBC) – Vancouver with a focus on Microtechnologies for Quantitative Biomedicine.

Dr. Kaigala started his position as an Associate Professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering at UBC in 2022 and concurrently leads activities on an Advanced Tumor Profiling program at the Vancouver Prostate Center. He and the team along with collaborators strive to work on topics around microscale technologies, medical devices and algorithms and apply them to different facets of Cancer biology and diagnostics. 

Biography: 

Dr. Kaigala earned his PhD from the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Oncology in 2009 from the University of Alberta where he developed microfluidic systems for genetic analysis. He completed an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University between the Microfluidics Laboratory in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Dept. of Urology at the Stanford Medical School (VA Hospital).  In 2010 he joined the Research laboratory of IBM in Zurich and worked until 2022 where he was a Senior Scientist and a Principal Investigator leading a team of researchers in the area of Precision Diagnostics.  He participated regularly in student training and was a recognized PhD advisor at ETH-Z, EPFL and Technion University.  

Dr. Kaigala has authored and co-authored 78 papers in refereed journals and co-authored a book on open-space microfluidics. He has been the co-author on over 45 families of patents and his work has influenced the design of biotech products in the industry in the field of hematology and protein analysis. In recognition of his development of the intellectual property, Dr. Kaigala was named “master inventor” by IBM in 2019. His research is in the areas of microscale fluid control, microscale molecular assays and technologies for personalized medicine and is passionate about translational clinical/medical research. With his team, he strives to bring quantitation in biology and medicine by leveraging bio-instrumentation and micro-and nanosystems. Science originating from the Kaigala group has been recognized through the European Research Council grants, several IBM awards (10 in total) and the Horizon Alumni Award from the University of Alberta in 2014. He was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020.