{"id":5014,"date":"2026-05-13T15:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&#038;p=5014"},"modified":"2026-08-10T10:22:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T14:22:32","slug":"kenneth-austin","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/kenneth-austin\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenneth Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"599\" src=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Austin-Kenneth.jpg\" alt=\"by Corban Swain\" class=\"wp-image-5572\" style=\"width:142px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Austin-Kenneth.jpg 400w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Austin-Kenneth-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Hampton University<\/strong><br>Faculty Advisor: Prof. Brandon DeKosky<br>Research Supervisor: Julian Rojo Gallegos<br>Department: Chemical Engineering<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kenneth Austin is a rising senior Biology major with a Psychology minor at Hampton<br>University, where he serves as President of the Minority Association of Pre-Health Students<br>and is a published first-author researcher in the Chakafana Lab. His research focuses on<br>developing innovative combination therapies for cancer through translational biomedical<br>research. Kenneth has conducted research at the Dartmouth Cancer Center investigating<br>strategies to overcome radiation resistance in glioblastoma and is currently a research intern<br>in the DeKosky Lab at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. Here, he contributes<br>to the development of high-throughput platforms for screening novel T-cell-engaging<br>immunotherapies. Beyond research, he is a long-term volunteer with Hampton University&#8217;s<br>TRiO Upward Bound program, mentoring high schoolers and supporting college readiness.<br>Kenneth&#8217;s long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist through an MD\/PhD program,<br>translating discoveries from the clinic and laboratory into novel cancer therapies that improve<br>patient outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><br><strong>Characterizing Screening Parameters for T Cell Engager Discovery<\/strong><br>Kenneth Austin1, Julian Rojo Gallegos2 and Brandon DeKosky3<br>1Department of Biological Sciences, Hampton University<br>2Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>3Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>T cell engagers (TCEs) are a novel class of cancer immunotherapy that has led to long-term<br>remission in a subset of blood cancers and is promising in solid tumors. TCEs are bispecific<br>antibodies with two distinct binding arms: one that binds to T cells, and the other that binds to<br>a tumor-associated antigen on cancer cells, ultimately leading to cancer cell death. However,<br>identifying novel TCEs is difficult because individual molecules need to be tested one by one,<br>a process that is laborious and time intensive. As such, we have developed a high-throughput,<br>function-first screening platform that links TCE phenotype with genotype. The pipeline will<br>encapsulate reporter, target, and secretor cells within microfluidic droplets for an incubation<br>period, break the droplets, and then analyze the cells with flow cytometry for activation<br>markers. We will first use positive and negative control cells in well plate experiments to<br>determine assay parameters. Once these parameters have been defined, we will screen a<br>synthetic TCE library to assess our assay\u2019s performance. We anticipate this platform will<br>enable high-throughput identification of functional TCEs, establishing a scalable strategy for<br>screening TCE libraries for novel cancer immunotherapies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5382,"template":"","profile_category":[25],"class_list":["post-5014","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2026-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5668,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5014\/revisions\/5668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=5014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}