Shruti Naik

Naik was born in India, and moved to America at the age of twelve.[1] Naik dealt with the culture shock through humour, and made her way through high school as a stand-up comedian.[1] Whilst a high school student Naik came across the story of Bonnie Bassler, a biologist at Princeton University, who was working on glowing bacteria.[1] After watching Bassler on television, Naik decided she wanted to become a biologist, and took classes in microbiology at high school.[1] She was an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she majored in cell and molecular biology.[2] As an undergraduate Naik worked in the Food and Drug Administration laboratory on campus.[1] After graduating, Naik was appointed to the Naval Medical Research Center, where she looked at immune responses to traumatic brain injury.[1] Naik completed her doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Yasmine Belkaid.[3] She was a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University.

Naik studies the interactions between immune cells and microbes in biological tissue. In particular, Naik is interested in the tissues that interface with various organs, including the skin, lungs and gut.[4] She has investigated inflammation and tissue regeneration, host-microbe interactions and immunity.[4] Her research on skin stem cells was the first to identify how the skin remembers injuries and exposure to irritants, showing that the long-lived epithelial stem cells in the skin have a memory to inflammatory stimuli. Repeated exposure can change the genetic landscape of stem cells, making them quicker to respond when they next encounter an attack. This response can be beneficial, such as allowing for faster healing of wounds, or they can be damaging, such as allowing for inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis.[5] Naik was made a Packard Fellow in 2020.[6]

• 2015 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation[7]
• 2016 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award[8]
• 2017 Sartorius Prize winners[2]
• 2018 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists[5]
• 2018 Nature Research Awards Finalist[9]
• 2018 Damon Runyon Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists[10]
• 2018 Tri-Institution Breakout Award[11]
• 2019 Takeda Awards Innovators in Science Award Early Career Winner[12]
• 2020 Packard Fellow[6]

• Engwerda, Christian (2012-08-09). "Faculty Opinions recommendation of Compartmentalized control of skin immunity by resident commensals". Faculty Opinions – Post-Publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature. doi:10.3410/f.717952313.793458263. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
• Iida, Noriho; Dzutsev, Amiran; Stewart, C. Andrew; Smith, Loretta; Bouladoux, Nicolas; Weingarten, Rebecca A.; Molina, Daniel A.; Salcedo, Rosalba; Back, Timothy; Cramer, Sarah; Dai, Ren-Ming (2013-11-22). "Commensal Bacteria Control Cancer Response to Therapy by Modulating the Tumor Microenvironment". Science. 342 (6161): 967–970. Bibcode:2013Sci...342..967I. doi:10.1126/science.1240527. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 6709532. PMID 24264989.
• Naik, Shruti; Bouladoux, Nicolas; Linehan, Jonathan L.; Han, Seong-Ji; Harrison, Oliver J.; Wilhelm, Christoph; Conlan, Sean; Himmelfarb, Sarah; Byrd, Allyson L.; Deming, Clayton; Quinones, Mariam (2015). "Commensal–dendritic-cell interaction specifies a unique protective skin immune signature". Nature. 520 (7545): 104–108. Bibcode:2015Natur.520..104N. doi:10.1038/nature14052. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 4667810. PMID 25539086.