With a background in molecular medicine focused on infectious diseases, Harini Subbaraman joined the Institute of Medical Virology in Zurich as a PhD candidate in microbiology and immunology. “I’m part of a group working toward the long-term goal of developing a vaccine for HIV. We study the immune response in individuals who are able to produce antibodies that can neutralize several HIV subtypes. Our work sheds light on how and why only some people develop these antibodies so that we can recreate the necessary conditions in a protective vaccine.”
The PhD program is structured so that daily life is within the lab routine, but everybody has to complete a certain number of credits and a certain number of teaching hours. The institute offers many resources to its students, not only in terms of educational support, but also in terms of access to research materials. “We use plasma and cell samples from the Swiss HIV Cohort Study, a database and bio bank of people living with HIV,” Subbaraman says. “They form the basis of a lot of our work.”