The Department of Pathology is pleased to announce a new faculty member joining our team, effective June 1. Taru S. Dutt, Ph.D., is joining the Division of Laboratory Medicine as an assistant professor. Dutt joins us from Colorado State University where she served as a research scientist I and as co-director of the Flow Cytometry and Single Cell Sequencing Core since 2022.
Dutt earned her Ph.D. in Immunology and Nanotechnology in 2018 from South Asian University in New Delhi, India. Before her role as a research scientist, Dutt was a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University studying several tuberculosis vaccine candidates. She earned her Master of Science in Biotechnology from Amity University in Uttar Pradesh, India, in 2012.
Throughout her research career at Colorado State University, Dutt discovered that B cells residing in the lungs provide significantly better protection against Mtb infection compared to B cells in circulation. Dutt developed a murine model of non-tuberculous mycobacterium exposure to investigate the impact of prior non-tuberculous exposure on immunity to subsequent infections caused by similar mycobacterial strains to improve the development of tuberculosis vaccines. At Colorado State University, Dutt established high-throughput platforms for flow cytometry, single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics. In addition, she developed robust computational pipelines for analyzing high-dimensional data, enabling meaningful interpretation and advancing a comprehensive computational immunology platform.
Dutt is a member of The VALIDATE Network- Vaccine development for complex intracellular neglected pathogens, Collaboration for TB Vaccine Discovery, The Antibody Society, American Lung Association, The Union for Tuberculosis and Lung Health, International Society for Advancement of Cytometry and American Association of Immunologists. She is currently serving as guest associate editor for Frontiers in Immunology: Humoral Immunity in Tuberculosis and Nutritional Immunology.
Dutt has played a key role in advancing the global reach of next-generation computational immunology by teaching specialized courses at leading international research institutes. She led a comprehensive workshop on spatial transcriptomics data analysis at the African Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, where she trained early-career scientists in integrating spatial data with immunological insights to better understand tissue-specific immune responses. Additionally, she taught a hands-on course titled “Digging Deep into Chronic Infections through Single-Cell Transcriptomics” at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Through these international teaching efforts, Dutt has contributed significantly to fostering collaborative research in global infectious disease communities.