DIRECTORY LISTING
Biography
P. Mandal, Ph.D., Biological Sciences
Dr. Mandal received her B.Tech in Biotechnology (2001-2005) from Haldia Institute of Technology, India. During her bachelor's curriculum, she got deeply interested in studying pathogenic viruses causing disease and pursued her PhD along these lines from Purdue University, Dept of Biological Sciences, USA. For her Doctoral thesis, Dr. Mandal investigated the role of interferons, an essential component of mammalian anti-viral immunity, during herpesviruses infection. Herpesviruses are ubiquitous DNA viruses that have evolved with specific hosts, learning to evade mammalian immunity and often encoding specific suppressors of anti-viral immune mechanisms. All these lead to the establishment of latent viral infection for the life of the host. When immunity is compromised, these viruses reactivate, resume replication and cause disease. Herpes-related diseases due to primary reactivation or reactivation range from mononucleosis, cold-sores to cancers as well as developmental defects. After her PhD, awarded in 2013, Dr. Mandal joined the laboratory of Prof. Edward Mocarski at Emory University, Atlanta GA to continue working on herpesviruses, innate immunity as well as host-pathogen interactions. At Emory University, Dr. Mandal's research focused on programmed cell death signaling, a recently identified component of cell-autonomous immune defense that plays roles during development, homeostasis, immunity against pathogen among many vital processes. Currently, Dr. Mandal has three main research directions in her laboratory: investigating how programmed cell death signaling impact immune responses during infectious diseases with a primary focus on lung inflammatory diseases, how herpes-virus-encoded suppressors of cell death pathways function and development of immunotherapy tools to modulate programmed cell death signaling during disease. Dr. Mandal has published her original work in several well-established journals (including Molecular Cell, Immunity, PloS Pathogen, Viruses) and has secured grants (including but not limited to Pilot Funding from Cystic Fibrosis Foundation). Dr Mandal is currently collaborating with Omios Biologics, a biotech startup working to develop therapeutic applications from Dr. Mandal's work. Dr. Mandal is currently also an editor-in-chief of a book from Elsevier, as well as serves on the Editorial Boards of Frontiers in Cell Death and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.