Immunology and Biochemistry , Reproductive Immunology and Endocrinology
About
Dr. Aarthi Sundararajan has completed her Doctoral studies in Microbiology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. During this time, she was also a visiting graduate student at the David H Smith Center for Vaccine Biology & Immunology, University of Rochester Medical Center, New York, USA. She has worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Microbiology and Immunology at the Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University, USA. She has worked as a DST-sponsored Women Scientist and as an Adjunct Faculty at the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar (IIPHG), Gujarat. She has joined the Institute of Science at Nirma University as an Assistant Professor, starting from December, 2021. Her current research area interests include reproductive immunology, reproductive endocrinology, viral immunology and B cell immunology. Her research studies have focused on understanding mucosal B cell response in response to acute and latent infection models. In addition, she has worked in registered human vaccine clinical trials, evaluating vaccine induced mucosal B cell response. As a DST-sponsored women scientist at IIPHG, she has worked extensively in the area of Maternal and Child Health. Specifically, her research work has focused on identifying immune cells- associated unique biomarkers for early diagnosis of pre-eclampsia among pregnant women. Furthermore, she has developed a novel quartile scoring approach involving prenatal stress hormones for prediction of poor birth outcome such as low birth weight and adverse birth outcome. She has also identified specific prenatal hormone associated parameters for prediction of stillbirth among pregnant women. She has been awarded the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Health (RSTMH) Early Career Small Grant, in collaboration with the National Institute Health Research (NIHR), United Kingdom to determine the role of maternal Toxoplasma infection in regulating developmental and behavioural outcome in infants and toddlers.
