Sanjay is the project coordinator for the “COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium”, (CCC19) consisting of over 125 cancer centers and other organizations that have come together to collect data about cancer patients who have been infected with COVID-19. Previously, Sanjay worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, where he tried to develop vaccine candidates against Zika and Dengue. He got his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Chemical and Physical Biology, studying small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) for their role in the stress response and aging. Using protein engineering and CRISPR knockout strategies, Sanjay showed that sHSPs have conserved roles among vertebrates, and sHSPs have evolved possibly under the organellar and organismic proteostatic demands. When not in lab, Sanjay moonlights as a popular science writer.
