Zoltan Kis is a Lecturer at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield. Previously, he was a Research Associate in the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Research Hub at the Sargent Centre for Process Systems Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, modeling COVID-19 mRNA vaccine production. He gained his PhD in Bioengineering from Imperial College London in 2015. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Zoltan Kis was part of a group working on computer modeling of RNA vaccine production. As it became clear that mRNA vaccines would be crucial to the pandemic response, the team was called on to advise global organizations on how best to produce the vaccines at scale. Now, he is leading a new project at the University of Sheffield, developing platform processes for faster, more efficient production of RNA vaccines. We spoke with Kis to find out more.
