Jyothi Purushotham

In 2013, Jyothi graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rochester with a BS in Molecular Genetics and a minor in Anthropology. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research at the L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India. In partnership with Dr. Virender Sangwan and Dr. Indumathi Mariappan, she developed a protocol to apply mesenchymal stem cells from the corneal limbal stroma towards the treatment of ocular surface injuries and corneal scarring. Jyothi’s efforts resulted in two co-authored publications, and the protocol is undergoing testing in a phase II clinical trial. 

Subsequently, Jyothi joined a population health research team led by Dr. Rajeev Ramchandran at the University of Rochester. There, she created a web-based educational tool that offered personalized diabetes-management recommendations to members of the low-income community. Jyothi also designed and led a pilot study to measure health behavior change amongst users. 

Integrating her passion for biology and global health, Jyothi began studies towards an MSc in International Health & Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford in 2015, through a Clarendon Scholarship. Jyothi’s dissertation research—carried out under the mentorship of Dr. Sarah Gilbert—focused on enhancing the large-scale production capacity of the Modified Vaccinia Ankara viral vaccine vector for clinical use, using recombination-mediated genetic engineering to create mutants with improved yield, growth characteristics, and immunogenicity. 

Jyothi hopes to continue investigating safe and efficacious vaccine approaches against infectious diseases endemic to low-resource settings as a doctoral student and in the long term.