Nitya Jain, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

I am an Immunologist and the head of a research laboratory at Harvard Medical School/Mass General Hospital. My research is focused on understanding how the immune system develops and operates in early life. The driving force of my work is the idea that early life events that impact immune development can have long-term consequences on health and disease. Immune system programming starts early in life and may influence the risk of developing conditions such as allergic, autoimmune and neuropsychiatric disorders in childhood and adulthood. Therefore, an understanding of how the immune system is ‘educated’ or ‘mis-educated’ under specific circumstances in early life will provide opportunities to assess, with a new perspective, disease risk and pathology in later life. I received a Master’s degree in Microbiology from the University of Pune, India and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. I completed postdoctoral training at the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology at MGH. After being awarded an NIAID K22 award, I transitioned to the Department of Pediatrics at Mass General for Children where I head an NIH funded research laboratory at the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center. My work has contributed to our understanding of how microbes shape immune development and functionality at birth and beyond. I am also passionate about STEM learning and outreach, and actively participate in promoting access and education for budding scientists, from kindergartners in elementary schools to high school students and undergraduates who intern in my research lab.

Listed skills include Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Immunology, Tissue Culture, and 5 others.