I am a NIH/NHLBI K99/R00 Fellow, an Intersections Science (ISFS) Associate 2021 and Instructor of Medicine at the Pulmonary Center in Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine with research interests focused on understanding how lung epithelial cells act as critical coordinators of lung immunity during health and disease. Before I picked up pipettes and syringes, I was a competitive swimmer and a student-athlete in India.
?I was born on October 25th 1991 to the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame inductee Padmashri Taranath N. Shenoy and Mrs. Sarojini Shenoy in Mumbai, India. Born to a swimming legend, I quickly took to the water and started competing by the age of 4 years. Between ages of 4 and 22, trained and nurtured by my parents, I competed in numerous local, state and national level swimming (both short distance and open water) and waterpolo tournaments and accrued over 450 medals with 39 meet records and >50 overall championships.
As I worked my way through schooling from Sharon English High School, Mulund, Mumbai, I took a liking to academics and discovered my passion for science. After I was ranked as the top scoring student-athlete across Maharashtra state in the Secondary School Certificate exams of 2007, I decided to focus majority of my time and attention towards academics while juggling competitive swimming and a passion for soccer. Drawn to the biological sciences, I received my Higher Secondary School Certificate in the field of Science in 2009 from KET's V.G. Vaze College of Science before going on to complete my BS and MS in Biotechnology from Ramnarain Ruia College of Sciences in 2012 and 2014, respectively. I continued to lead my school swimming teams to inter-collegiate championships as a student athlete while doing so.
In July 2014, I embarked on a voyage to USA in pursuit of my dream of performing research in Microbiology and Immunology. I started my PhD work in the lab of Dr. Carlos J. Orihuela at University of Texas Health San Antonio before moving with Dr. Orihuela to The University of Alabama at Birmingham (in 2015) where I worked on identifying the host-pathogen interactions during Streptococcus pneumoniae infections. My doctoral work was focussed on elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which S. pneumoniae evades inflammation within the heart during invasive pneumococcal disease. After receiving my PhD in 2017, I began my postdoctoral work in the Pneumonia Biology labs with Dr. Joseph P. Mizgerd at the Pulmonary Center in Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. My current research interests are focussed on understanding the crosstalk between distinct lung epithelial cells and lung resident CD4+ T cells in context of infection, inflammation, allergy and immunity. Mentored by Drs. Orihuela and Mizgerd, I have published primary research articles in respected journals like Nature Communications, Mucosal Immunology, PLOS Pathogens, Journal of Infectious Diseases, JCI Insights among many others and have presented my work at numerous international conferences. Excellent mentorship in addition to my humble childhood upbringing that prioritized dreaming, hard work, persistence and thirst for excellence have served me well even in my academic training, and I have been the recipient of multiple institutional and scientific society honors/awards as a research trainee (see achievements).
As a scientist, my goal is to perform the most exciting, ground breaking and out-of-the-box science and on the way create new knowledge at the frontiers of biomedical research. I see my job as a unique opportunity to identify and fit distinct pieces of an intricate puzzle laid out to us by evolution.