I I joined the Dengue Project under Prof. Sudhir Krishna in July 2019.  Since then I have been involved in coordinating the activities of the project. In January-February 2020, I visited Nairobi  where along with Swetha Raghavan conducted a whole genome sequencing workshop at KAVI- ICR, using the ONT platform for coronavirus samples obtained from camels in Kenya.

One of the core aspects of the project is to develop a vaccine against Dengue. Nucleic acid based vaccines are  at the forefront and the latest development in vaccine technology, Arun Sankaradoss et al. have developed a DNA based vaccine and my focus in the coming months is  along with Swetha Raghavan to develop a mRNA vaccine against Dengue and use lipid nanoparticles as a delivery system for the mRNA, for the formulation bit I will be working with Sanjeeb Katila from Praveen Vemula’s lab. My broader interest is to work in the building of a Indian Virome Project  and  gain experience in techniques like whole genome sequencing  and bioinformatic analysis that are critical tools for the identification and characterization of potentially deadly pathogens.