Understanding the interplay between hosts and pathogens is vitally important for rational design of treatment for microbial infections and diseases. I am particularly interested in immunology, microbial pathogenesis, the problem of evolution of virulence and identifying factors that are associated with virulence, from both the host and microbial perspectives. To study evolution-related & host-pathogen interaction questions, I utilize the pathogenic & medically relevant fungus Cryptococcus neoformans. C. neoformans infects a wide variety of hosts and causes cryptococcosis, a common opportunistic infection in AIDS patients which results in fungal meningitis.
