Employee of the Month: Urvashi Rai

The Sanaria employee of the month for May 2022 is Urvashi Rai.  Urvashi is a member of the Vaccine Extraction and Model Systems team, responsible for a portfolio ranging from extraction of sporozoites from mosquito salivary glands for GMP manufacturing, conducting research in immunology and model systems and managing a crucial program to train vaccine extraction specialists.  Urvashi was nominated for employee of the month for her outstanding efforts to create, train, and maintain an exclusive taskforce at Sanaria called the “Part-time Vaccine extraction specialists” She took on this responsibility to meet our team’s goal to have available, enough dissectors to successfully dissect 50,000 mosquitoes in a single day. And that goal was achieved in December 2021! But Urvashi’s nomination for this award is not just for this single achievement at Sanaria. It is also for her unwavering dedication to Sanaria’s cause, crowned by her exemplary work ethic. On any day Urvashi  attacks whatever she is working on, with everything  she has in her power, executing the task, documenting in many creative ways, and doesn’t go home before the data has been completely analyzed and distributed to everyone who it is relevant to. And she does this every single day she comes to work!

Urvashi gained her PhD in Cell Biology from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and her MS in Recombinant DNA Technology from New York University, NY where she first became interested in malaria.  Urvashi has been with Sanaria since March 2018.