Rithvikha NairRithvikha Nair, a senior studying in the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center (UCDC), has received a 2025 undergraduate fellowship program funding award from Cayman Biomedical Research Institute (CABRI) to support her research in Type 1 diabetes (T1D).

CABRI is a private foundation that funds research for cancer and rare diseases. CABRI undergraduate fellowships are available on a competitive basis to undergraduate students who have been offered a research position by a qualified principal investigator.

Nair is a visiting scholar to UAB from Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence in Greater Noida, India. In June 2025, she joined the laboratory of Sasanka Ramanadham, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology (CDIB) and senior scientist in the UCDC. She completed a summer internship with the lab in 2024 and is currently working on her thesis for her Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology Research.

The Ramanadham Lab focuses on lipid signaling as is relates to understanding diabetes and curative therapy options.

The CABRI award will help support Nair’s investigation of how lipid signaling pathways regulate macrophage polarization in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).

“In T1D, pro-inflammatory macrophages contribute to autoimmune destruction of pancreatic β-cells,” Nair said. “Building on our lab’s findings that lipids promote inflammation, I am examining downstream gene targets using CRISPR-Cas9–mediated knockout approach in bone marrow–derived macrophages. I aim to determine how loss of these genes affects macrophage polarization.”