After I earned M.B.B.S (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) from Sri Devaraj Urs Medical College, India in 2001 followed by post graduate degree in Pathology, M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) from Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences, India in 2007. I secured the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences “Gold Medal” for scoring highest marks in the University Pathology Examination. After this education, i worked as Assistant Professor in Pathology at Sri MVJ Medical College and Research Hospital, India (2008), following which I moved to International American University, Saint Lucia (2008-12). After completing the AP/CP residency at University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 2016, further training was obtained in Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN in two fellowships; General Surgical Pathology (2017) and Pulmonary Pathology (2018) with a special interest in Breast Pathology. Additionally, I have a special interest in interstitial lung diseases reading a large number of surgical lung biopsies at Mayo Clinic during my fellowship training. As a full time Assistant Professor at VCUHS, i am using this expertise in surgical/pulmonary pathology to serve a large and diverse patient population. In this position I supervised and instructed residents and fellows in surgical pathology, pulmonary medicine and pediatric pulmonary medicine. As a full-time faculty to the school of medicine, I instructed medical students and formal lectures and laboratory sections. As a staff physician, I serve as a liaison to clinicians and subspecialty areas of pulmonary disease and present in subspecialty chest tumor conference, breast health conference and multidisciplinary interstitial lung disease conferences. In addition to this I maintain an active program and scholarship in surgical pathology by presenting research work as papers and presentations at national meetings, population peer-reviewed journals and have presented in several national and international invited lectures.
My research included “Differentiating atypical mesothelial proliferation from malignant mesothelioma” in small pleural biopsies remains challenging as most of these biopsies don’t have enough tissue to look for soft tissue invasion. In our publication, BAP-1 (BRCA Associated Protein-1) was helpful to make this distinction. In addition, it also predicted if a loss of BAP-1 as demonstrated in atypical mesothelial proliferation is predictive of the development of malignant mesothelioma. One of the biggest challenges in nonneoplastic end-stage lung diseases is to differentiate usual interstitial pneumonitis (UIP) from other chronic fibrosing interstitial lung diseases. Our study especially talks about the differentiating features between several causes of end-stage lung diseases with an emphasis to define the criteria for the diagnosis of chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis. The management, with the availability of specific antifibrotic agents to halt the progression of fibrosis in UIP, has made the distinction clinically important. By providing evidence and simple clinical approaches, this body of work has changed the standards of care for affected patients and will continue to assist in relevant medical settings well into the future. I served as the co-investigator in all these studies. Further, I am extending my expertise for several Cancer Center research projects as a collaborator including "Targeting lung tumors expressing mutant p53 with oncolytic viruses and suicide genes" where R01 funding was obtained. Another fascinating project is "A Novel Targeted Antibody Therapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma: Development of a Novel Combination Therapy with Immune Modulating Therapies" for which the funding is currently pending review. Meanwhile our work on COVID19 where we demonstrated the presence of NLRP3 inflammasome aggregates in the lungs of fatal COVID-19 patients, thus providing the potential molecular link between viral infection and cytokine release syndrome.

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