I am curious about humans, the world we inhabit and influence, and which influences us in return. As an immunologist, this curiosity shaped my research on barrier tissues. Barrier tissues such as the skin, gut, and lungs lie between us and our external environment. So our immune system has to constantly be on the lookout for danger and react quickly and appropriately when there is a threat. Any imbalances or deficiencies and we get diseases such as allergies, autoimmunity, or an increased risk of infections. Understanding how our immune system works helps us to develop new therapies for many debilitating conditions.
At the moment, I am experimentally occupied with leveraging viruses to deliver drugs promptly and precisely. However, mentally I digress frequently and gleefully into domains outside my immediate expertise.
Incidentally, my name, “Koshika,” means a cell in Hindi, my native tongue.
“An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”
Betrand Russell