Kavish Khamesra and his Head Start on Sleep… Research
Despite being a first-year undergraduate, bioengineering student Kavish Khamesra, E’28, presented two years of high school research on sleep apnea in Pacific Islanders at the 2025 SLEEP Conference, demonstrating an early passion for neuroscience and medical device research.
Kavish Khamesra, E’28, bioengineering, was one of the youngest attendees at the 2025 SLEEP Conference in Seattle last month. Despite only being a first-year undergraduate student at Northeastern, he presented two years’ worth of research on sleep apnea alongside neuroscientists, doctors, and PhD students via his poster titled, “Age and sex differences in sleep architecture and obstructive sleep apnea among pacific islanders: a single-center study in Saipan.”
Hailing from a family of computer scientists, Khamesra is a trailblazer. He began his research journey in high school in Portland, Oregon, with Kimberly Hutchinson, MD, a Neurologist and Sleep Medicine Physician and Associate Professor of Neurology and Sleep Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University. Starting in 11th grade, he began working with Doctor Hutchinson’s sleep apnea data, combining his interest in neuroscience and bioengineering.
Given his busy lifestyle, Khamesra often struggles to obtain a good-night’s sleep. “Learning about the effects of sleep deprivation really sparked my curiosity,” he explains, “and led me down an interesting path that developed into a genuine fascination with sleep.”
He is interested in studying brain and body functioning during sleep, as well as medical device research.
Last fall, Khamesra started at Northeastern as a Bioengineering major with a minor in Mechanical Engineering. He was drawn to the co-op experience at the university, plans to complete two throughout his time here, and is hoping to find medical device and sleep-related opportunities in Boston.
“I’m still deciding whether I want to go straight into building medical devices or do research.” He tells me. “I’m already getting the research side of things, so I think going on co-op will help me a lot.”
Khamesra now works in Bioengineering Associate Professor Sam Chung’s lab. The Chung Lab works with C. elegans to study neuroregeneration, or the process of neuronal regrowth following a lesion. This research is pivotal in determining solutions for central nervous system injuries, potentially leading to medical applications in humans.
While the Chung Lab does not focus on sleep, it does address Khamesra’s enthusiasm toward neuroscience, which he hopes to continue exploring throughout his time at Northeastern.
“[Sleep] is an emerging area of research, [we] don’t know much about it,” says Khamesra, “and whenever something is unknown, it’s always intriguing to me.”
Khamesra and Doctor Hutchinson are in the process of submitting their work to be published in various journals. Stay tuned!