Sujata Walunj

Sujata grew up in a small rural village in India, where access to education was limited, especially for girls. Encouraged by her supportive family, she pursued studies in biotechnology and earned advanced degrees from prestigious institutions in India and Australia. Her PhD focused on discovering new medicines with novel targets for malaria and toxoplasmosis, where she identified new drug candidates with potential as therapeutics against globally and economically relevant parasites. As a postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, she now applies her expertise to designing novel protein-based immunotherapies and highly targeted antibodies for blood cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia. Sujata’s work bridges basic science and medicine, combining structural biology, protein engineering, and biophysics to develop safer, more effective therapies that could transform treatment options for patients worldwide and address critical unmet medical needs in oncology.