Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Athulya Ram, an SoM graduate student has received the award for Best paper in Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology, 2023 for her paper "Local Immunodeficiency: Combining Cross-Immunoreactivity Networks". The paper was published in the Journal of Computational Biology, authored jointly by Athulya and her advisor Prof. Leonid Bunimovich. 

The paper aims to study the phenomenon of cross-immunoreactivity found in infectious diseases like Hepatitis-C, HIV, dengue, influenza, etc. Viral populations and, consequently, cross-immunoreactivity networks are not static and are subject to dynamical changes caused by emergence or introduction of viral variants with altered phenotypes. In this paper, the authors focused on the epidemiological event where a viral transmission occurs between two chronically infected hosts, which results in merging of two intra-host viral populations in the state of stable immune-adapted equilibrium. They found that such events may result in a rapid re-arrangement of the viral ecosystem and a change of the roles played by viral variants. These findings emphasize how phenotypic features of particular viral genomic variants are formed by both their antibody and "quasi-social" environments rather than pre-defined by their genomes. This also highlights challenges in effective vaccine design by demonstrating how the evolutionary trajectories of intra-host viral populations subjected to the introduction of new CRNs are affected by the state of pre-existing populations.

About the Award

The QBioS student awards are an annual tradition, where students are recognized for their recent publications in three categories - 1. Cellular and Molecular Biosciences, 2. Organismal Behavior and Physiology, and 3. Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology. There is also an award for Community Outreach and Service, for contributions to QBioS, Georgia Tech, or the broader scientific community. The winners get a cash award and an opportunity to present their work during the QBioS annual Winter Share.

About Athulya Ram

Athulya was only the second graduate student from SoM to be a part of the QBioS program, which aims to bridge the gap between mathematics and biology to tackle important problems in the life sciences.. We are encouraged to hope that this recognition encourages more students with a mathematical foundation to pursue research in quantitative biosciences.

Athulya is currently a lecturer at the Department of Mathematics, Stanford University.