Kevin Erning

PhD Candidate

There’s no one sweeter…literally, he’s an excellent pastry chef. Kevin received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering and B.S. in Molecular Cellular Biology from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2016. Prior to Duke, he worked as a process engineer in renewable plastics manufacturing and process development at Archer Daniels Midland. He is now the senior PhD student in the lab with a focus on developing hydrogels for brain repair after stroke and understanding their repair mechanism. He hopes to use underlying mechanistic understanding to improve the rationale for biomaterial design that addresses neurological deficits from stroke. Outside of lab, Kevin helps out with Duke’s BME PhD Student Association and BME PhD Peer Mentoring, while always finding time to bake.