ABOUT
My name is Akshat, and I am an immunologist: the kind who will draw cytometry plots on a bar napkin on a first date.
I have my PhD in immunology from The University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I live in The Athens of Biotech: Boston, Mass.
I’ve been a field sales specialist selling microbial ID assays, and, most recently, I was a research scientist at an immunotherapy start-up.
Inflammatory Content was born so that I had a space to be creative, chaotic and also contemplative (pictured right 😉) about science.
Come chill for a bit; I can (almost always) promise a good time!
CASCADES
We liken immune responses to a cascade: a small spark that builds into a conflagration. In my opinion, science writing is like that, too. You start with a germ of an idea which gets bigger and bigger as you ponder it and shape it into a response to a phenomenon, a paper, what have you…
Thus Cascades is where I’ll pen my thoughts about scientific concepts or analyses of interesting papers.
Synapses
My creative non-fiction grapples with mental health, the examination of Scientist, as an identity and the question of finding one’s place in the world. Thus Synapses is where my worlds—not collide—but synaptically connect.
It won’t be too pretentious, I promise!
AVIDITIES
Podcasting is new to me, and I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t do it sooner: I love it! Currently, my podcast work is under the auspices of Antibuddies which is an excellent podcast anyway. But, yeah, here I get to go on about immune mechanisms and cells and cytokines…it’s heaven!
Cross-Presentations
Let’s be real, there is a lot of inherent drama associated with immune mechanisms. Immune cells are constantly boosting each other or find themselves at odds, cytokine pleiotropy also lends itself to wildly different actions an outcomes depending on the context. This stuff is ripe for the meme-ing!