Nikhil Marudai

Research Specialist

Human Biology B.S, UCSC

Minor in Bioinformatics

nmarudai@ucsc.edu

I joined the Boyd Lab as an undergraduate my junior year and continued my work here as a Research Specialist after graduating. My current project focuses on age-dependent fibroblast responses to influenza infections. I have also worked on identifying distinct fibroblast populations within the lung, particularly adventitial fibroblasts, which may play a crucial role in regulating the local immune response.

My time in this lab has been immensely valuable, and I am incredibly grateful to have had this opportunity. I progressed from never having used a pipette to designing and managing my own projects. Along the way, I learned many wet lab techniques, like immunofluorescence, flow cytometry, cell culture, and etc. I even had the chance to engage in computational work, helping analyze single-cell RNA-seq data and generating and processing bulk RNA-seq data.

I am planning  to attend medical school, and I am eager to continue pursuing research as a physician. Outside of the lab, I love playing soccer and rock climbing, though I enjoy most sports in general.