Night with a Nerd with Harshini Mukundan

Join BSMA Board of Directors member Harshini Mukundan as she discusses Diagnosing Infectious Diseases

Abstract: 

It is evident today- more so than ever before- that emerging infectious diseases are a major concern to global health. Having efficient diagnostics that can be done quickly and easily at the point of need can greatly simplify decision making during routine medical visits and outbreaks. Current strategies for diagnosing infectious diseases and novel innovative development will be discussed.

Dr. Harshini Mukundan has a MS degree in microbiology and a Ph. D. in Biomedical Sciences.  She worked for two years as a Team Leader in a start up biotechnology company and was instrumental in leading efforts for the development of sensors for the detection of bio-warfare agents.  Subsequently, she joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a NIH Post-doctoral fellow to develop diagnostics for active tuberculosis.  After two years, she was converted as a staff scientist.  Today she is the deputy group leader of pyhsical chemistery and applied spectroscopy, and a team leader leading the chemistry for Biomedical Applications team- an extremely multidisciplinary team for the development of diagnostic solutions for infectious diseases. She has authored over 70 peer-reviewed manuscripts, written several book chapters, authored books, and has five patents to her credit. She is the winner of several awards such as the New Mexico Technology Council’s Women in Technology Award in 2016, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Fellow’s Prize in 2017. The technology developed by her team - Universal bacterial sensor- was awarded a R&D 100 award in 2018, Including a gold award for corporate gold responsibility - the first ever for LANl.  Her dream is to develop effective, inexpensive, technically simple point of care diagnostics for universal application towards all infectious disease.