Zoltán Kis

Zoltán Kis, Ph.D. is a Lecturer at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of Sheffield, and an Honorary Lecturer at the Centre for Process Systems Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London. Zoltán is developing and modelling rapid-response vaccine production platform technologies, such as the RNA platform. This work is addressing the challenge of producing large volumes of vaccines, rapidly, at high quality and at low cost for pandemic response.

Prior to joining The University of Sheffield, Zoltán was a Research Associate in the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub at the Centre for Process Systems Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering. There he worked with Prof. Nilay Shah and Prof. Cleo Kontoravdi. The aim of this work was to develop vaccine manufacturing technologies capable of producing large amounts of vaccines against known and unknown pathogens, quickly, at high quality and low cost, in order to: (1) prevent the spread of epidemics and pandemics, and (2) meet changing immunization needs in low- and middle-income countries.

These new and exciting vaccine platform technologies are currently being used for COVID-19/SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccine production. In this work, Zoltan was modelling COVID-19/SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccine production processes based on rapid-response platform technologies, such as the RNA vaccine platform. The aim of the modelling was to guide the development and optimize the operation of these rapid-response vaccine production platforms in order to facilitate high-volume, rapid, low-cost and high-quality vaccine deployment.

Zoltán is open to providing consultancy in the following areas: Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing, RNA vaccine manufacturing, vaccine production process modelling, techno-economic assessment and modelling (aka. process-cost modelling), bioprocess modelling for QbD.

Prior to joining the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub, Zoltán was a Research Associate at the Institute for Integrated Economic Research (IIER) think-tank and a Visiting Academic at the Centre for Process Systems Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London. Thereby, Zoltán was modelling the technical feasibility and environmental sustainability of industrial processes to support future policy decisions.

Zoltán obtained his Ph.D. in Professor Rob Krams’ group, at the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London. During his Ph.D., Zoltán developed systems and synthetic biology tools for cardiovascular research and co-authored 5 peer-reviewed journal articles, a book chapter and presented his research results at international conferences.

Prior to his Ph.D., Zoltán obtained his M.Sc. in Applied Biotechnology from Uppsala University (Sweden). He performed his M.Sc. degree project at the German Cancer Research Centre (Heidelberg, Germany) as an Erasmus Research Scholar at Heidelberg University (Germany). There, Zoltán tested the oncolytic parvovirus H-1 on cultured bone cancer cells; obtained results are patented and published in 2 peer-reviewed articles.

Preceding his M.Sc., Zoltán graduated from Babes-Bolyai University (Romania) with a B.Eng. in Chemical with Biochemical Engineering. During his undergraduate studies, Zoltán carried out chemistry and biochemistry research, both experimentally and theoretically (computational quantum chemistry molecular modelling). The aim of the wider research project was to develop blood substittutes for emergency life-support interventions. Obtained results were published in 4 peer-reviewed journal articles and presented at international conferences.