The School of Public Health congratulates Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology doctoral candidates Kassandra Baron and Shreyaa Senthilkumar, who have recently received prestigious fellowships.
Baron received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for her project, “Elucidating Mechanisms Regulating Treg Tissue Responses Driven by Interleukin-33 in the Lung.” The two-year F31 is funded at $100,228 by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome are life threatening conditions driven by excessive inflammation and impaired lung repair, with no effective targeted therapies. Baron’s project seeks to define the mechanisms controlling ST2 expression and evaluating the efficacy of IL-33-stimulated T cells (Tregs) in promoting lung repair. The work could provide critical insights for developing Treg-based immunotherapies to improve ALI outcomes.
Senthilkumar has been selected for a Patient Safety Fellowship by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, a program that will give her firsthand access to national experts in the field during nine weekly sessions. Fellows from interdisciplinary graduate programs will work in teams on collaborative learning, artificial intelligence-enabled systems, human-centered design, and ways to use real-time data to support clinicians, strengthen decision-making, and empower patients as active participants in their care.
“This fellowship hits close to home for me,” says Senthilkumar, whose grandmother contracted Clostridioides difficile while hospitalized. A highly contagious bacterial infection, C. diff affects the colon, causing severe diarrhea, abdominal pain and fever. It occurs when antibiotics destroy healthy gut bacteria, allowing C. diff to overgrow and release toxins. “Through this fellowship, I would like to learn about recent health care system innovations to prevent these kinds of dangerous hospital-acquired infections.”