Dr. Shibali Das joined the Department of Medicine in the Cardiovascular Division as an instructor in February of 2023. She received her BSc and MSc degree in Microbiology from University of Calcutta Kolkata, India. She then pursued her doctoral degree in Bio-chemistry at Bose Institute, in collaboration with University of Calcutta. Her doctoral research focused on Immunotherapeutic approaches to tuberculosis including the development of novel immunomodulatory agents for therapy, elucidation of mechanisms of action of new therapeutic agents, mechanisms of immunosuppression during tuberculosis and regulation of host innate and adaptive immune response. She received her PhD degree from University of Calcutta in 2016 and then joined Dr. Shabaana Khader’s group in the Department of Molecular Microbiology, Washington University in St. Louis for Postdoctoral studies in 2016. In the Khader Lab, her work was focused on identifying new ways to target the lung to improve vaccine induced immunity against tuberculosis, studying early host-pathogen interaction using mouse, non-human primate and human.
In addition, Dr. Das research was also focused on testing different vaccines for efficacy studies. During her stay at Khader lab, she demonstrated critical role of Innate lymphoid cells in immunity to tuberculosis and also defined immune landscape that contributed to the disease outcome during tuberculosis. Her primary research interest will be to define immune mechanisms that contribute to the pathogenesis and progression of myocarditis and heart failure. Specifically, she is interested in studying the role of macrophage subsets in myocarditis and resultant heart failure, elucidating the role of trained immunity against Cardiac disease using cutting edge mice model and development of vaccine strategy against cardiac infections. Her key interests are innate and adaptive immunity, innate lymphoid cells, vaccine induced immunity, infectious diseases and cardiac disease. Her research areas are elucidating the mechanism that contribute to the pathogenesis and progression of myocarditis and heart failure and developing vaccination strategies to improve host immunity.