Klavs F. Jensen

Jensen received his chemical engineering education from the Technical University of Denmark (M.Sc., 1976) and University of Wisconsin–Madison (PhD, 1980). Jensen's PhD advisor was W. Harmon Ray. In 1989, he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Klavs served as Head of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering from 2007 to 2015. In 2015, Professor Jensen became the founding Chair of the scientific journal Reaction Chemistry and Engineering by the Royal Society of Chemistry focused on bridging the gap between chemistry and chemical engineering. ==Research==

Jensen's research revolves around reaction and separation techniques for on-demand multistep synthesis, methods for automated synthesis, and microsystems biological discovery and manipulation. Jensen, Armon Sharei and Robert S. Langer were the founders of SQZ Biotech. The trio, together with Andrea Adamo, developed the cell squeezing method in 2012. It enables delivery of molecules into cells by a gentle squeezing of the cell membrane. The mini factory can make thousands of doses of a drug in about two hours. It is an alternative method to electroporation or cell-penetrating peptides and operates similarly to a french cell press that temporarily disrupts cells, rather than completely bursting them. Method The cell-disrupting change in pressure is achieved by passing cells through a narrow opening in a microfluidic device. The device is made up of channels etched into a wafer through which cells initially flow freely. As they move through the device, the channel width gradually narrows. The cell's flexible membrane allows it to change shape and become thinner and longer, allowing it to squeeze through. As the cell becomes more and more narrow, it shrinks in width by about 30 to 80 percent The throughput is approximately one million per second. Mechanical disruption methods can cause fewer gene expression changes than electrical or chemical methods. Applications Like other cell permeablisation techniques, it enables intracellular delivery materials, such as proteins, siRNA, or carbon nanotubes. The technique has been used for over 20 cell types, including embryonic stem cells and naïve immune cells. Initial applications focused on immune cells, for example delivering: • Anti-HIV siRNAs for blocking HIV infection in CD4+ T cells. • Whole protein antigen and enabling MHC class I processing/presentation in polyclonal B cells, facilitating B cell-based vaccine approaches. Commercialization The process was originally developed in 2013 by Armon Sharei and Andrea Adamo, in the lab of Langer and Jensen at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That year, SQZBiotech won the $100,000 grand prize in the annual startup competition sponsored by Boston-based accelerator MassChallenge. Boeing and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) awarded the company the CASIS-Boeing Prize for Technology in Space to support the use of Cell Squeeze on the International Space Station (ISS). ==Honours==

Memberships and fellowships Jensen was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987. Jensen became an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2004 and American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. He also became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. In March 2012, he was the first recipient of the IUPAC-ThalesNano Prize in Flow Chemistry. In 2016, he received the AIChE Founders Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Chemical Engineering. Jensen has also received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. == Selected works ==

Klavs Jensen has authored numerous journal articles describing significant advances in flow chemistry, microfluidics, chemical vapor deposition, and chemical engineering which includes but is not limited to: • Bashir O Dabbousi, Javier Rodriguez-Viejo, Frederic V Mikulec, Jason R Heine, Hedi Mattoussi, Raymond Ober, Klavs F Jensen, Moungi G Bawendi "(CdSe) ZnS core− shell quantum dots: synthesis and characterization of a size series of highly luminescent nanocrystallites", Journal of Physical Chemistry B 46(101), 9463–9475 (1997). • Jamil El-Ali, Peter K Sorger, Klavs F Jensen "Cells on Chips", Nature 442(7101), 403 (2006). • Klavs F Jensen "Microreaction engineering - is small better?", Chemical Engineering Science 56(2), 293–303 (2001). • Jinwook Lee, Vikram C Sundar, Jason R Heine, Moungi G Bawendi, Klavs F Jensen "Full color emission from II–VI semiconductor quantum dot–polymer composites", Advanced Materials 12(15), 1102–1105 (2000). • Axel Gunther, Klavs F Jensen "Multiphase microfluidics: from flow characteristics to chemical and materials synthesis", Lab on a Chip 6(12), 1487–1503 (2006). • Harry Moffat, Klavs F Jensen "Complex flow phenomena in MOCVD reactors: I. Horizontal reactors", Journal of Crystal Growth 77(1–3), 108–119 (1986). • Lisi Xie, Qing Zhao, Klavs F. Jensen, Heather J. Kulik "Direct Observation of Early-Stage Quantum Dot Growth Mechanisms with High-Temperature Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics", The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 120(4), 2472–2483 (2016). ==See also==