Krithika Venkataraman

Krithika Venkataraman earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Smith College in 2015, with highest honors in biochemistry and a minor in neuroscience. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. At Smith College, Krithika studied gene regulation in filarial parasites in the laboratory of Steven A. Williams. For this work, she was awarded the 2014-2015 McKinley Honors Fellowship and the 2015 Margaret Wemple Brigham Prize from Smith College.

Krithika was a summer intern in the laboratory of Utpal Tatu at the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore, India), where she worked on methods to control infections caused by protozoan parasites. She was also a visiting summer student in the laboratory of Kevin C. O’Connor at the Yale School of Medicine (New Haven, CT), where she investigated the role of muscle-specific tyrosine kinase (MuSK) autoantibodies in myasthenia gravis pathology.

Krithika entered the PhD program at The Rockefeller University (New York, NY) in 2015, and joined the laboratory of Leslie B. Vosshall. Currently, as a PhD candidate, Krithika studies how female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes regulate their attraction to humans in a reproductive state-dependent manner. Specifically, she is interested in how mosquito-specific genes and endocrine signaling modulate mosquito attraction. The broader goal of her work is to elucidate novel points of intervention to break the deadly biting cycles of disease vector mosquitoes.

She is a recipient of the 2015-2016 Women & Science Fellowship and the 2018-2019 David Rockefeller PhD Fellowship from The Rockefeller University. She was also awarded the 2018 Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD Fellowship.