Lalita Ramakrishnan

Lalita Ramakrishnan is Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Cambridge, Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Honorary Consultant in infectious diseases at Cambridge University Hospital. Prof. Ramakrishnan’s research is focused on understanding tuberculosis pathogenesis and the basis of vastly different susceptibilities to TB. She also explores how TB bacteria develop drug resistance and tolerance.

After getting her M.B.B.S. from Baroda Medical College, Ramakrishnan did her Ph.D. in Immunology at Tufts University, followed by medical residency at Tufts- New England Medical Center and Infectious Diseases Fellowship at University of California, San Francisco. She initiated TB research in 1992 as a postdoctoral fellow with Stanley Falkow at Stanford University. As a starting faculty at the University of Washington in 2001, she pioneered the zebrafish model of TB. Her work has led to fundamental insights into how the TB bacteria evade and exploit host processes and develop drug resistance, which suggest new approaches to TB therapy. Two of her discoveries have led to TB clinical studies and trials.

In 2014, Prof. Lalita Ramakrishnan was recruited to the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Organization and the American Academy of Microbiology. She is the recipient of the 2024 Robert Koch Prize.