Tharshana Stephen

Tharshana Stephen holds Master’s degrees in Genetics and Core Facility management and contributed as a flow and biomarker technology expert at the Cytometry and Biomarker core facility in the Institut Pasteur. Where, she provided valuable support and collaboration on numerous projects. In parallel to her expertise activity, she pursued her PhD in immunology at the Université Paris Cité, under the mentorship of Lars Rogge. Her doctoral research focused on exploring the role of Interleukin-23 (IL-23) in mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells during which she developed an innovative in-vitro model aimed to expand MAIT cells, revealing an enhanced cytotoxic response upon IL-23 stimulation, along with significant regulation of genes associated with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. Presently,

Tharshana is a flow technology expert at the VIB Flow Core in Leuven, led by Jochen Lamote. Here, she continues to apply her expertise in flow cytometry and data analysis. In this capacity, she collaborates with Julie and Apostolos on their research focused on investigating the dynamics of lymph node macrophage efferocytosis.