Dr Vasanthakumar is a research fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and leads the Treg research team within the laboratory of Professor Axel Kallies. He received his PhD from Madurai Kamaraj University (India), where he discovered a novel genetic switch that regulated antibiotic biosynthesis in bacteria. He took up immunology research during his postdoctoral training in Melbourne and pioneered in the field of regulatory T cell (Treg) biology. He is currently pursuing fundamental and applied questions at the intersection of tissue biology and immunology to better understand autoimmunity, metabolic diseases and cancer.