Tejabhiram Yadavalli

I am currently a senior postdoctoral fellow in your department at UIC, under the mentorship of Prof. Deepak Shukla, a stalwart in the field of herpes virology. I joined this current position in early 2016, immediately after finishing my PhD in material science and nanotechnology focusing on the development of novel Drugs and Drug Delivery Systems. With an undergraduate degree in biotechnology and strong desire to work in the field of nanotechnology, I chose to work with my current mentor such that I could work with the state-of-the-art nanomachines, viruses. Having a professional degree in material science has definitely given me the advantage of an outsider’s perspective to existing biomedical problems. During my PhD, I extensively worked on the development of a pH and temperature responsive magnetic drug delivery system; the article resulting from this work was published in a society journal (Yadavalli et al, JMMM, 2014) and remains to be one of my highest cited articles. Another good example of this is discussed in my latest article where I improved the topical delivery of HSV antiviral using a relatively simple carbon-based sustained release platform (Yadavalli et al, Sci Adv, 2019). This publication not only garnered national media interest but also has sparked the attention of multiple industry giants to invest in my project. However, these outcomes would not have been possible without the constant support and rigorous training I received at the current lab where I published several other articles on the development and testing of antiviral drugs (Yadavalli et al. Mol. Ther. Nuc. Acids 2017; Jaishankar et al. eaan5861, Sci. Trans. Med, 2018).