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K-State Today

May 6, 2021

Girish Neelakanta to present Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology Seminar

Submitted by Brandy Nowakowski

The diagnostic medicine and pathobiology department will present the last seminar of the semester at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, May 6, via Zoom.

Girsh Neelakanta, associate professor of biomedical and diagnostic sciences at the University of Tennessee, will present "March to the Beat of a Different Drummer! Rickettsial Pathogen Modulates Signaling in Ticks for its Survival."

Neelakanta received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science from Bangalore University, India, in the field of microbiology and biotechnology. He received his doctorate from the University of Cologne, Germany in the field of microbial genetics and genomics. He completed his postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, in the field of vector-borne diseases. He was then promoted as an associate research scientist at Yale University School of Medicine to continue his work on vector-borne diseases. In 2012, he was appointed as an assistant professor at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. He was then tenured and got promoted as an associate professor in 2018 at ODU. His laboratory moved to University of Tennessee in December 2020. Current research efforts from his laboratory at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville are focused in understanding various aspects of vector-borne diseases that include studies on understanding molecular aspects of host-pathogen interactions, development of transmission-blocking vaccines and vector biology.