Dr. Kulesa is a quantitative developmental biologist. His expertise lies at the intersection between biology and mathematics. He collects multi-scale data and constructs models to explain complex biological phenomena such as collective cell migration —a process essential to development of the nervous system and disease. His research focuses on neural crest cell development and how mistakes in migration and patterning lead to human birth defects and disease. Neural crest cells are highly migratory embryonic cells in vertebrates —animals with backbones.

Before joining Children’s Mercy, Dr. Kulesa was the founding Director of Imaging at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. During his almost two decades at the Stowers Institute, he established an internationally recognized program in neural crest cell biology. While there, he trained students in techniques to study cell migration during vertebrate development, using neural crest and neural crest-derived cancer models. Following his work at the Stowers Institute, he was the Berthiaume Family Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Notre Dame