Sonya Kumar Bharathkar | Post Doctoral Researcher
John Hopkins University | United States

My name is Sonya Kumar Bharathkar, and I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in Dr. Jamie Spangler’s lab at Biomedical Engineering department at Johns Hopkins University. My current research focuses on engineering cytokine-based immunotherapeutics, and studying their structure and function,  which will both uncover immune biology and guide the development of new therapies for allergic and inflammatory diseases. I earned my PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I investigated the structure and biophysics of secretory and dimeric immunoglobulin A, and developed multifunctional secretory antibodies targeting mucosal pathogens. My research interests lie at the intersection of structural biology, molecular engineering, and immune modulation.