I obtained my PhD in year 2012 from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India. To pursue my graduate studies I was awarded prestigious Indian Council of Medical Research fellowship. My thesis work was focused on T cell trafficking in human renal allograft rejection. After my PhD I continued working in AIIMS, New Delhi in the capacity of a Senior Research officer. Here, I was engaged in conducting clinical studies on role of regulatory T cell in multiple drug resistance development among HIV-TB co-infected patients. This was a multi-centric project involving North-eastern states of India. My major work here was to perform immunological studies on the role regulatory T cells and how they contribute in development of multiple drug resistance among HIV-TB co-infected patients. Seeking to advance my career I looked for opportunity to do a postdoctoral fellowship in USA. I was fortunate to join Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in June 2013. Here I studied role of Fas pathway in regulating pathogenesis of type 1diabetes. Based on this work, I won several prestigious awards, including “Annual Young Investigator Award” for excellence in translational research from the Pathology Department at Johns Hopkins University and abstract award from the American Association of Immunology (AAI). My work was also selected for oral presentations at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and AAI Annual meeting. Later I got this opportunity to work at NIH, as a full time employee position with US Government. I joined here in March 2016 and here I am working on cellular mechanisms of autoimmune diseases.

I am an Immunologist by training and have received in depth basic cellular immunology training during my thesis work, at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. I am currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institute. I am working on Fas pathways in regulating suppressor B cell response among T1D patients. I developed interest in immunology of autoimmune diseases while working as an exchange student at the University of California, Davis, USA. Here I worked on mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) signaling pathway in autoimmune arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. My exposure to the field of autoimmunity and desire to advance my career in this field made me look for a postdoctoral fellowship in USA after completing my graduate studies. We have demonstrated FasL expression on IL-10 B cells in T1D subjects using splenocytes from nPOD repository and are performing experiments to elucidate the role of Fas pathway in regulation of T1D disease pathogenesis. At present I am working on role of MCAM (CD146) expressing lymphocytes in psoriatic arthritis associated atherosclerosis and cardio-metabolic diseases. CD146 is a defined marker for T cells making IL-17. The association of CD146 T cells making Il-17 has been well established in psoriasis disease model and in order to understand the dynamics of these cells with treatment regimen we are following psoriasis patients at different time points and evaluating their lymphocyte profile. CD146 B cells and their role in psoriasis are little known. We are trying to establish the function and characteristics of these cells and are performing single cells antibody cloning to establish the autoimmune nature of CD146 B cells.