Ayan Mondal, Ph.D. is a third-year post-doctoral research fellow in Prof Elizabeth Mellins’ laboratory at Dept of pediatrics, Stanford University. “I completed my graduation from University of Calcutta, India, in 2017. I have conducted 1.5 years of research on molecular medicine following graduation and joined as a post-doctoral researcher at the Arnold School of Public health, University of South Carolina, in the year 2019. During the training, I studied neuroimmune signaling mechanisms in the gut-liver-brain axes in mouse models of metabolic disorders and military-deployment-associated disorders.

My studies elucidated the mechanism of neuroinflammation and blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction mediated by specific proteins that are elevated in blood during these disease conditions. In my post-doctoral research with Prof Mellins, I am studying changes in BBB function in PANS. I am focusing on elucidating the mechanisms of action of novel modulators of BBB that are relevant to homeostatic maintenance of the BBB and other novel modulators that increase BBB permeability during flares of PANS. My proposed experimental strategies include transcriptomic and proteomic approaches in cell types of the CNS neurovascular unit.”