People
Current Lab Members
Kartik Rajagopalan, M.D., Ph.D.
Position: Principal Investigator | Email Dr. Rajagopalan
Dr. Kartik Rajagopalan is a physician-scientist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, and a member of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at UT Southwestern. He specializes in medical critical care.
Dr. Rajagopalan earned his medical and doctoral degrees at UT Southwestern where he studied metabolic fluxes during cell proliferation in the lab of Dr. Ralph DeBerardinis. He then completed his Internal Medicine Residency and Pulmonary and Critical-care Fellowship at Columbia University in New York. He performed post-doctoral work understanding the role of leptin signaling during influenza and COVID infection in the lab of Dr. Jeffrey Friedman at Rockefeller University.
He returned to UT Southwestern to start a faculty position and laboratory in September of 2023.
When not in the laboratory, Kartik continues to practice medicine as an intensivist.
Mahalakshmi Aranganathan
Position: Lab Manager | Email Mahalakshmi
Mahalakshmi Aranganathan earned her B.Tech in Biotechnology from VIT, completing a fellowship at IIT Madras investigating the tumor suppressor RASSF8 in breast cancer and gaining experience in molecular biology and cell‑based assays. As Indus Biotech, she conducted virtual screening, molecular docking, and dynamics simulations for Alzheimer’s targets. She then completed her M.S. in Bioinformatics at UT Dallas, studying bistable gene switch mechanisms driving metastasis.
Now a research technician at UT Southwestern, she investigates how the brain regulates energy balance and immune function during infection. Her research interests include metabolism, neuroimmunology, molecular network dynamics, and data‑driven approaches to understanding complex physiological processes, with long‑term goals of advancing translational biomedical research.
Soumya Kamath, M.S.
Position: Graduate Student | Email Soumya
Soumya is originally from North Carolina, where she earned her B.S. in Biology with a minor in Hispanic Studies at East Carolina University. She remained at her alma mater to pursue an M.S. in Biomedical Sciences, joining the Department of Integrated Physiology and Metabolism. Her master’s thesis focused on the mechanisms of female pelvic floor and genitourinary function in relation to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
Her interest in metabolism brought her to UT Southwestern in the fall of 2024, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences in the Cell and Molecular Biology program, with a track in Molecular Mechanisms of Metabolic Diseases. Soumya’s current research focuses on investigating lipolysis as a protective immune response in the context of sepsis.
Lab Alumni
| Name | Position | Year(s) | Current Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tadiwanashe Gwatiringa | Lab Manager | 2023-2026 | MPH Student at Johns Hopkins University |
| David Bautista | Post-doctoral Fellow | 2025 | Adjunct Professor at Tarrant County Community College |
| Catherine Pontius | Research Technician | 2024 | Bioassay Scientist at Eurofins |
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