Anusha is an MD-PhD student in the Gaiha Lab. She is currently wrapping up her third and final year of graduate school in the Immunology PhD program in the Division of Medical Sciences at Harvard Medical School, having previously completed two years of medical school in the Health Sciences and Technology program at Harvard Medical School and MIT. Anusha graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering in 2018. She completed her senior thesis on mechanisms of metastasis in pancreatic and lung cancer by 3D-printing models of bronchi at the City of Hope Cancer Center with Dr. Ravi Salgia.

In the lab, Anusha uses computational tools and experimental validation to rationally design and test T cell vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 and other lethal sarbecoviruses as well as probe the molecular interaction between CD8 T cells and antigen-presenting cells. For her work on mutation-resistant vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 variants, she was an invited speaker at the World Health Organization global consortium on pan-sarbecovirus vaccines in February 2022 and a panelist at the United Nations Science, Technology, and Innovation panel in May 2022. In the future, she hopes to be a practicing physician-scientist at an academic teaching hospital.

Outside of the lab, Anusha is an avid Indian classical dancer. She enjoys biking around town, hiking in the White Mountains, exploring new vegan recipes and bakes, plucking tomatoes from the vine just a few days too early, and watching trashy reality TV.