Why did you choose medicine?
My interest in medicine started as an emotional desire to help manage the illness of my grandmother. As I grew older, my intellectual curiosity was drawn to science and discovery. I pursued an opportunity as an undergraduate to work in the laboratory of a leading scientist and soon discovered a pathway designed to train individuals to work at the intersection of medicine and science. Today, I am lucky to be at Yale, which places a tremendous value on academic medicine and provides an environment for young physician-scientists like me to thrive.
Why did you choose Yale Department of Internal Medicine for your fellowship?
The COVID-19 pandemic began during my intern year in Yale’s Internal Medicine Traditional Residency Program. I was one of the first housestaff to fall ill with COVID-19 and suffered quite a prolonged infection with 10 days straight of fever and a slow recovery. Throughout this process, I had tremendous support from my co-residents, chiefs, Dr. Mark Siegel, and other faculty members. Dr. Manisha Juthani, then Infectious Diseases fellowship program director, provided me with reassurance during this time of fear and uncertainty and with an opportunity to contribute during my quarantine.
As we were still learning how to manage the virus, individuals in my situation with a persistent positive qPCR were subject to a prolonged quarantine even after symptom recovery. I was desperate to contribute, so Dr. Juthani connected me with Dr. Mahalia Desruisseaux, who was leading the hospital’s efforts to provide convalescent plasma via an emergency use authorization to patients critically ill with COVID-19. In addition to providing access to the therapeutic to hundreds of patients, we synthesized our experience through a retrospective analysis that added to our broader understanding of how to manage severely ill patients with this new virus. Interactions with Infectious Diseases faculty at Yale, like Dr. Juthani and Dr. Desruisseaux, as well as with Dr. Shaili Gupta in a separate project during residency, reaffirmed my commitment to pursue infectious diseases and continue my fellowship training at Yale.
What was your path to Yale?
After completing my undergraduate studies, I pursued a Fulbright Scholarship to work at a biomedical research institute in Valencia, Spain. This opportunity solidified my plan to pursue an MD/PhD and sparked my interest in specializing in work in the international arena. When I was applying for physician-scientist programs through a dual residency/fellowship training pathway, my graduate school advisor strongly advocated for Yale. The other major reason I wanted to come to Yale was the world-class Department of Immunobiology. I am now pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Joseph Craft and have had the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from some of the brightest minds in the field.
You recently received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund/ASTMH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Tropical Infectious Diseases. Tell us about the research you plan to conduct.
This fellowship will provide me with two years of support to conduct human research in Brazil at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. I am interested in studying host response to infections with soil-transmitted helminths (ascariasis, trichuriasis, and hookworm disease), which infect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The primary goal of this research is to re-purpose recombinant proteins, originally developed as vaccine candidates against these pathogens, for diagnostic purposes.
The second part of the fellowship will focus on using the human samples that we collect to evaluate ex-vivo the circulating immune response to restimulation with these recombinant proteins to better understand host immunity in an endemic population. We hope this will also serve to improve the vaccine pre-clinical pipeline, through early screening and subsequently ranking of vaccine candidates that induce a favorable immune response to human samples.
Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine Section of Infectious Diseases engages in comprehensive and innovative patient care, research, and educational activities for a broad range of infectious diseases. Learn more at Infectious Diseases.