Research Focus

Dr. Pahwa’s expertise is in Immunology with a focus on immune development and HIV immunopathogenesis across the life span from childhood to aging. The questions her lab wants to address are: 1) How the immune system changes as chronologic age advances, and 2) How experiments of nature – infectious diseases like HIV, COVID-19 and TB – help us to unravel secrets of the immune system. Some projects use common vaccination practices to probe the efficiency of the immune system.The Pahwa lab has expertise in multiparameter (30+ color) flow cytometry for immunophenotyping and functional assessment of innate and adaptive immunity and transcriptomics including single cell analyses.

The Lab is well equipped with excellent funding and support system to conduct translationally relevant clinical research with laboratory resources: Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Immunology, Virology, and Genomics Core labs as well as Microbiology Departmental and Institutional Resources; resources with access to pre-clinical research development through Non-Human Primates models of infectious disease and aging and access to/recruitment of UM patient population; and access to valuable sample repositories.