Salk Institute scientist Deepshika Ramanan named Rita Allen Foundation Scholar

Salk News

Salk Institute scientist Deepshika Ramanan named Rita Allen Foundation Scholar

June 18, 2025

LA JOLLA-Salk Assistant Professor Deepshika Ramanan has been named a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar, a distinction given to early-career leaders in the biomedical sciences whose research holds exceptional promise for revealing new pathways to advance human health.

"Shika's exceptional talent, determination, collaborative spirit, and mentorship skills make her a very deserving recipient of this award," says Salk President Gerald Joyce. "Her bold approach to important but underappreciated topics in immunology is likely to have a lasting impact on public health."

Ramanan is one of seven scientists the Rita Allen Foundation named to its 2025 class of Rita Allen Foundation Scholars. The selected scholars will receive grants of up to $110,000 annually for up to five years to conduct innovative research on critical topics in neuroscience, cancer, immunology, and pain.

"We are honored to welcome this remarkable group of scientists to the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars community at a time when scientific research faces unprecedented challenges," says Elizabeth Christopherson, president and chief executive officer of the Rita Allen Foundation. "As the research landscape continues to evolve with new complexities, these scholars represent exceptional talent and determination to pursue groundbreaking work that will ultimately improve human health. Their commitment to exploring the unknown gives us great hope for the future of medicine and the millions of lives their discoveries may touch."

Ramanan studies the communication between the gut and mammary glands to understand how maternal immunity is transferred through milk. Her work uses advanced multi-omic methods to uncover how maternal immune cells support lactation and shape long-term health outcomes for both mother and child.

Ramanan earned her bachelor's degree in cell and molecular biology from Winona State University and her PhD in immunology and inflammation from New York University. She previously received the V Scholar Award from the V Foundation for Cancer Research, the Damon Runyon Dale F. Frey Breakthrough Scientist Award, and the STAT Wunderkind Award.

About the Rita Allen Foundation:
The Rita Allen Foundation invests in discoveries in their earliest stages in biomedical research, civic science, and philanthropic practice. Through the Foundation's work in civic science, it seeds networks to accelerate learning, inclusion, and impact to ensure that science and evidence help to inform solutions to society's most pressing problems. Making progress toward this goal requires building new knowledge and collaborations across many sectors.