Vaishnavi Kaipilyawar, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Public Health Research Institute
Newark, USA
Vaishnavi Kaipilyawar, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, studying the heterogeneity in host-pathogen interactions that underlie the spectrum of clinical states in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infected hosts: ranging from bacterial clearance or establishment of latent infection and progression to subclinical and active Tuberculosis (TB) disease. Vaishnavi received her PhD in 2022 at Rutgers under Dr. Padmini Salgame’s mentorship and has continued her postdoctoral research in the Salgame lab. Vaishnavi also holds a Masters degree in Experimental Pathology from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and a Bachelors degree in Biotechnology Engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology, India. Using a combinatorial approach that leverages mouse models of TB alongside biological specimens and epidemiologically characterized clinical Mtb strains collected from cohorts of TB patients and their household contacts, Vaishnavi’s research seeks to develop candidate host biomarkers to screen and stratify individuals by TB risk, identify novel correlates of protection against Mtb infection and understand Mtb transmission dynamics. As a cross-disciplinarily trained scientist, Vaishnavi aims to utilize such integrated investigation strategies to ultimately discover the intricacies of host immune responses in TB.