Dr Lalita Ramakrishnan is Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Cambridge, UK and also a Group Leader in the Cell Biology Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. She received her medical degree from the Baroda Medical College in India, and her PhD in Immunology from Tufts University in Boston. After completing medical training and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases she moved to Stanford University as a postdoctoral fellow where she began her research into TB. She then joined the faculty at the University of Washington, where she developed a zebrafish model for tuberculosis. In 2014, she moved to the University of Cambridge and her laboratory continues to study TB pathogenesis. Professor Ramakrishnan has received several awards and honours, including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and the Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and EMBO and a Fellow of the Royal Society and Academy of Medical Sciences.