Socrates Fellows Who We Are Tamara Bhandari
Biomedical SciencesTamara is a fourth-year graduate student in Victor Nizet’s laboratory. She studies the host response to infection, with a focus on the link between the innate immune system, which responds to all microbes, and the adaptive immune system, which recognizes and remembers specific pathogens.
Driven by a wide-ranging fascination with science and biomedicine, Tamara has not only worked in laboratory research, but also in science writing, editing, and publishing, public health, and science teaching. She spent two exhausting and amazing years in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching seventh-grade science (in Nepali!). She believes that science is naturally fun and fascinating, and the goal of science education is to give people the tools to understand the complex and endlessly intriguing natural world. Though a native of Los Angeles, Tamara is the daughter and the wife of immigrants, and as such, she is particularly interested in making science accessible to immigrants and members of minority groups.
When not in the lab, Tamara likes to read, run, cook, and, most especially, play with her three-year-old son.
