Vivasvan Vykunta (he/him), a first-year PhD student in the Biomedical Sciences program, is one of 12 outstanding UCSF students chosen to receive an ARCS scholarship. The Graduate Division interviewed him in fall 2024.
Why did you decide to pursue a PhD?
I am pursuing a PhD as part of my MD-PhD training to learn about and contribute to our understanding of immunology. I hope my PhD training will enable me to unravel unknown aspects of our immune system’s regulation and apply this knowledge toward developing new therapeutics for patients with autoimmunity, cancers, and other diseases.
Why UCSF?
I chose UCSF because it uniquely offers graduate and professional programs exclusively in the health sciences, maintaining a diverse academic community with the sole mission of advancing human health worldwide. Additionally, the immunology community is incredibly collaborative and offers opportunities for me to learn from investigators who have pioneered immunologic research.
Tell us a little about your research.
I study the immune system, specifically in the context of cancers, to identify new mechanisms by which immune cells can be harnessed to eliminate tumors. This deeper understanding will hopefully allow for targeted immunomodulation to not just treat cancers, but also inform vaccine designs and strategies for treating autoimmunity. Eventually, I hope to apply this knowledge toward developing and validating new immunotherapies for treating patients facing a wide variety of diseases.
What are your post-graduation career goals?
Following my MD-PhD training, I will also complete my residency and fellowship training prior to being an academic physician-scientist. As a future academic physician-scientist, I hope to not only lead a translational research laboratory as a PI but also treat my patients in clinical settings with the advances I am leading in my laboratory.
What are your interests outside the lab?
Most weekends, I seize every opportunity to explore the natural outdoors and go hiking or biking along the beautiful trails around the Bay Area. I also enjoy attending various food festivals and cultural events around San Francisco to experience everything the city offers.
