Samruddhi Jewlikar

I started my journey as an undergraduate at IIT Madras in India, which is currently the topmost engineering institute in India, where I pursued my dual degree, BTech and MTech, in bioengineering. I was always fascinated by science, even as a child, and to satisfy my curiosity further, I took up a project during my final year where I studied a thermophilic bacterial enzyme and solved a crystal structure for it. I then moved on to pursue a PhD in the United States at Stony Brook University, where I studied biochemistry and structural biology. I was there until the beginning of 2025, and then I got an opportunity at UNC Chapel Hill because I wanted to expand my expertise. I was fascinated by immunology since my undergrad days, and I am very happy that I got this opportunity at the intersection of using computational tools and the wet lab. I am someone who is really passionate about bridging the wet lab biology and the computational aspects, because during my undergrad, I took many courses which were focused on coding and solving computational biology problems using Python as a programming language. In my current role, I get to learn so many new cutting-edge technologies and work with instruments and develop assays. My current advisor is quite keen on collaborating extensively and bringing cutting-edge technology to the department. I even organized a biolayer interferometry demo in my department by Sartorius to make everyone aware and take advantage of this opportunity.