Suryakala SarillaBennett (Surya)

Surya obtained her Ph.D. from Osmania University, India, in the area of biochemistry of ferritins. She previously worked as a Postdoc/Staff Scientist/Lab Manager in the laboratory of Dr. Sundarmoorthy at the University of Kansas and later at Vanderbilt University, where she focused her efforts on cloning, expression, purification and crystallization of pathogenic bacterial enzymes.  Surya later joined Ingrid Verhamme's laboratory at the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University, where she performed research on the biochemistry of hemostatic serpins. There, she was the first to optimize the production of human heparin cofactor II (HCII) in E. coli, in addition to designing and carrying out production of other human proteins using bacterial, yeast, and mammalian expression systems.

Surya joined Dr. Georgiev‘s laboratory as a Lab Manager in September 2015, and she is responsible for student training, wet lab management, and the expression and purification of various antigens and antibodies.