Kalyan Annamalai | Metabolism | Best Researcher Award

Prof. Kalyan Annamalai | Metabolism | Best Researcher Award

Texas A&M University, Mech Engg.,, College Station, United States

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Academic and Professional Background

Prof. Kalyan Annamalai, Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech, later conducting research at Brown University before joining Texas A&M in 1981. In 2005, he was competitively appointed as the Paul Pepper Professor. During his Fall 2013 sabbatical, he served as a Visiting Scholar at MIT’s Energy Laboratory. He is the author of two influential books—“Advanced Thermodynamics” and “Combustion Science and Engineering”—along with over 116 scholarly articles and 158 peer-reviewed conference publications. His interdisciplinary research spans from the respiratory quotient (RQ) and global CO₂ budget to second-law-based lifespan predictions and the application of group combustion principles to organ metabolism.

Research and Innovations

Prof. Annamalai’s research has advanced energy conversion through oxygen-deficient (OD) combustion, including group combustion modeling for both fossil fuels and biological systems. He holds a U.S. patent for NOx reduction using animal waste, achieving up to 90% reduction. He extended the Respiratory Quotient (RQ) concept, commonly used in biology (RQ ≈ 0.8 for humans), to evaluate fossil fuel emissions in tons of CO₂ per GJ. From Keeling’s atmospheric CO₂/O₂ data, he derived the Global RQ (≈ 0.47), providing a thermodynamic basis for the Earth’s carbon cycle and offering explanations for its climate response and axial tilt due to fossil fuel mining. His innovative application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics enabled entropy-based lifespan predictions. By linking OD combustion models to organ-level cell clouds, he addressed two fundamental biological puzzles: how organs scale metabolic rates across body sizes and why energy release per kg of organ mass declines with size. Medical practitioners can now use a defined “G_OD” number from his study “Secrets of Kleiber’s Law” to quantify organ oxygen deficiency.

Interdisciplinary Contributions

Driven by scientific curiosity, especially after retirement, Prof. Annamalai ventured into cross-disciplinary frontiers. Despite limited support due to political and institutional hurdles, he bridged engineering thermodynamics with biological metabolism. He discovered similarities between Specific Energy Release Rates (SERR) of fossil fuels and Specific Organ Metabolic Rates (SOMR). His work showed how oxygen-deficient combustion engineering principles could explain biological scaling laws, including the Kleiber’s law puzzle of whole-body metabolic rate adjustments across species. Remarkably, using just data from a 2 g shrew and a 390 g rat, his model predicted SOMR for 116 species, validating Lindstedt and Schaeffer’s hypothesis: that a blue whale and a tiny shrew operate on fundamentally similar biochemical processes.

Research Areas

His key research domains include: energy conversion from coal, animal waste, mesquite, and renewables; NOx reduction technologies using biomass reburning; and interdisciplinary approaches that apply the Second Law to lifespan prediction, as well as the oxygen-deficient combustion model to biological systems.

Professional Memberships

Prof. Annamalai is an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Combustion Institute, Pittsburgh, reflecting his longstanding contributions to both engineering and combustion science.

Notable Publications


Secrets of Kleiber’s and Maximum Metabolic Rate Allometries Revealed with a Link to Oxygen-Deficient Combustion Engineering

Author: Kalyan Annamalai

Journal: Oxygen

Year: 2025


Secrets of Kleiber’s and Maximum Metabolic Rate Allometries Revealed with a Link to Oxygen-Deficient Combustion Engineering

Author: Kalyan Annamalai

Journal: Preprints

Year: 2025


Breathing Planet Earth: Analysis of Keeling’s Data on CO2 and O2 with Respiratory Quotient (RQ), Part II: Energy-Based Global RQ and CO2 Budget

Author: Kalyan Annamalai

Journal: Energies

Year: 2024


Breathing Planet Earth: Analysis of Keeling’s Data on CO2 and O2 with Respiratory Quotient (RQ), Part I: Global Respiratory Quotient (RQGlob) of Earth

Author: Kalyan Annamalai

Journal: Energies

Year: 2024


Reburning of Animal Waste Based Biomass with Coal for NOx Reduction, Part I: Feedlot Biomass (FB) and Coal:FB Blends

Authors: Hyukjin Oh, Kalyan Annamalai, Paul G. Goughner, Ben Thien, John M. Sweeten

Journal: Energies

Year: 2021


Oxygen Deficient (OD) Combustion and Metabolism: Allometric Laws of Organs and Kleiber’s Law from OD Metabolism?

Author: Kalyan Annamalai

Journal: Systems

Year: 2021

Assist. Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Palikaras | Mitochondrial biology | Best Researcher Award 

Assist. Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Palikaras | Mitochondrial biology | Best Researcher Award 

Assist. Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Palikaras | Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

PROFESSIONAL PROFILES

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🎓 EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Dr. Palikaras earned his Doctoral Degree (Ph.D.) in Biology from the University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece (2011 – 2015). His dissertation, titled “Coordination of mitophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis during ageing,” focused on the regulation of mitochondrial function and autophagy in aging cells. Prior to his Ph.D., he completed a Master’s degree (M.Sc.) in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine (2009 – 2011) and a Bachelor’s degree (B.Sc.) in Biology (2005 – 2009) from the University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece.

🎓 CURRENT POSITION

Since April 2021, Dr. Palikaras has been serving as an Assistant Professor of Experimental Physiology at the School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His role is primarily focused on research (80%), allowing him to make significant contributions to molecular biology and physiology.

🏛️ PREVIOUS POSITIONS

Dr. Palikaras has a rich background in research, having worked at several prestigious institutions. From September 2020 to March 2021, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, under the supervision of Prof. Vilhelm Bohr. Before that, from July 2019 to September 2020, he was a Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) – Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Greece.

His postdoctoral research also included an AXA Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at IMBB-FORTH (July 2017 – June 2019), where he worked with Prof. Nektarios Tavernarakis. Additionally, he was a Visiting Scientist at CECAD, Cologne, Germany (July 2017 – September 2017) in the laboratory of Prof. Thorsten Hoppe. From September 2016 to June 2017, he was a Bodossaki Postdoctoral Research Fellow at IMBB-FORTH, also under the supervision of Prof. Tavernarakis.

🏆 FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS

Dr. Palikaras has received multiple prestigious fellowships and awards in recognition of his outstanding research contributions. In 2020, he was awarded both the EMBO Short-term Fellowship and the FEBS Short-term Fellowship to visit Prof. Thorsten Hoppe’s laboratory at CECAD, Cologne, Germany. In 2018, he received a Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) Research Grant to support his independent research.

His work has been recognized in various scientific conferences. In 2017, he won a Poster Prize for Outstanding Presentation at the EMBO Conference on Autophagy in Dubrovnik, Croatia. In 2016, he was awarded the AXA Research Fund Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Bodossaki Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. The same year, he received the “FOTIS KAFATOS” Award for Excellence from the Hellenic Society of Bioscience, acknowledging his outstanding contributions to the field.

Additionally, in 2015, Dr. Palikaras received the DeLill Nasser Travel Award for Professional Development in Genetics from the Genetic Society of America (GSA, USA). Earlier in his career, he was honored with the Manasaki Doctoral Fellowship (2012) from the University of Crete, along with scholarships from the Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology (2009 – 2011) and the National Fellowship Foundation of Greece (2005 – 2007).

🧬  MEMBERSHIPS IN SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

Dr. Palikaras is an active member of the international scientific community, contributing to various research networks and collaborations. Since 2022, he has been a member of the Hellenic Society for Neuroscience. In 2021, he joined both the Hellenic Society of Physiology and the GENiE – Group of C. elegans New Investigators in Europe, as part of the COST Action BM1408 initiative. Since 2019, he has been affiliated with the Hellenic Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and since 2013, he has been an active member of the Genetic Society of America (GSA).

Through his dedicated research, teaching, and active engagement in the scientific community, Dr. Konstantinos Palikaras continues to make significant contributions to experimental physiology, molecular biology, and aging research.

PUBLICATIONS📄

Loss of DNA glycosylases improves health and cognitive function in a C. elegans model of human tauopathy
    • Authors: Vinod Tiwari, Elisabeth Buvarp, Fivos Borbolis, Chandrakala Puligilla, Deborah L Croteau, Konstantinos Palikaras, Vilhelm A Bohr
    • Journal: Nucleic Acids Research
    • Year: 2024
Urolithins and Their Precursors Ellagic Acid and Ellagitannins: Natural Sources, Extraction and Methods for Their Determination
    • Authors: Christiana Mantzourani, Eleni Kakouri, Konstantinos Palikaras, Petros A. Tarantilis, Maroula G. Kokotou
    • Journal: Separations
    • Year: 2024
Caenorhabditis elegans as a Model System to Study Human Neurodegenerative Disorders
    • Authors: Antonis Roussos, Katerina Kitopoulou, Fivos Borbolis, Konstantinos Palikaras
    • Journal: Biomolecules
    • Year: 2023
The Role of Mitophagy in Skeletal Muscle Damage and Regeneration
    • Authors: Eirini Chatzinikita, Maria Maridaki, Konstantinos Palikaras, Michael Koutsilieris, Anastassios Philippou
    • Journal: Cells
    • Year: 2023
The Crosstalk between Microbiome and Mitochondrial Homeostasis in Neurodegeneration
    • Authors: Fivos Borbolis, Eirini Mytilinaiou, Konstantinos Palikaras
    • Journal: Cells
    • Year: 2023