Gundra Raissar

I am a DPhil student in Advanced Bioscience of Viral Products, supervised by Professors Anita Milicic and Tomas Hanke at the Jenner Institute, Professor Jan Rehwinkel at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (WIMM), and Dr. Oliver Goodyear at Oxford Biomedica. My research is funded by the BBSRC Collaborative Training Partnership (CTP) ABViP Studentship in conjunction with Oxford Biomedica, a leading gene and cell therapy company.
My academic journey began with a BSc in Virology and Immunology at the University of Bristol, where I also completed an industrial placement at GlaxoSmithKline on the stability of monoclonal antibody therapeutics. During my undergraduate studies, I conducted research in the Davidson Group on Dengue virus pathogenesis and in the Wooldridge Clinical T Cell Lab on the CD8+ T cell response to SARS-CoV-2. Building on this foundation, I pursued an MSc in Integrated Immunology at the University of Oxford. My master's research, conducted in the Bottomley Group, explored immunosenescence in kidney transplant patients.
Before beginning my DPhil, I worked as a research assistant in the Klenerman Group at the University of Oxford, contributing to the development of biomarkers for mucosal damage in coeliac disease. Currently, my doctoral research in the Milicic Group focuses on a cross-vector comparison of innate-adaptive pathways that underpin viral vector-induced T cell responses.