Associate Professor
Girish NeelakantaProfile page
Biomedical and Diagnostic
Orcid identifier0000-0001-8374-9604
- Biomedical and Diagnostic
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Biomedical and Diagnostic Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, 2407 River Dr., Knoxville, TN, 37996, United States
BIO
Dr. Neelakanta’s laboratory at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville researches human and animal tick-borne diseases such as human anaplasmosis, Lyme disease, relapsing fever, and Rickettsiosis. His laboratory has characterized some of the tick and bacterial molecules that could be potentially implemented in the development of vaccines against tick-borne diseases. The immediate goal for his laboratory is to test vaccine efficacy of these molecules in animal models. Currently, Dr. Neelakanta’s research is funded with an NIH R01 award. Before moving to UTK as a tenured Associate professor, Dr. Neelakanta served as an Associate research scientist at Yale University School of Medicine, CT, and as an Assistant and Associate professor with tenure at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA. Current research from his laboratory at UTCVM is focused on understanding various aspects of vector-borne diseases including studies on understanding molecular aspects of host-pathogen interactions, development of vaccines, and vector biology.
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
- Associate ProfessorUniversity of Tennessee at Knoxville, Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, Knoxville, United States26 Dec 2020
- Associate ProfessorOld Dominion University, Department of Biological Sciences, Center for Molecular Medicine, Norfolk, United States1 Jul 2018 - 25 Dec 2020
- Assistant ProfessorOld Dominion University, Department of Biological Sciences, Center for Molecular Medicine, Norfolk, United States22 Aug 2012 - 30 Jun 2018
- Associate Research ScientistYale School of Medicine, Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, New Haven, United States1 Jun 2010 - 21 Aug 2012
DEGREES
- PhDUniversity of Cologne, Institute for Genetics, Cologne, Germany
- M.Sc.,Bangalore University, Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Bengaluru, India
POSTGRADUATE TRAINING
- Postdoctoral AssociateYale School of Medicine, Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases,, New Haven, United States