Sumathi Sankaran-Walters, Ph.D.

Sumathi (Sam) Sankaran-Walters is an associate adjunct professor at UC Davis. She teaches microbiology and immunology for the School of Medicine and is also an instructor for the physician assistant and nurse practitioner programs at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis.

A microbiologist, Sankaran-Walters was named a 2010 UC Davis School of Medicine Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Scholar. The $2.1 million, NIH-sponsored career-development program provides junior faculty with multidisciplinary mentorship to establish independent research careers in areas relevant to women's health. The program also nurtures non-traditional interdisciplinary collaborations in focused and interactive research areas that are essential to improving the health of women. For her BIRCWH research, Sankaran-Walters plans to formulate a program to maintain mucosal health in older women. She is studying the effects of aging and menopause in women with HIV.

Other research interests include the role of hormones in the maintenance of mucosal integrity and barrier function and the combined effects on HIV, aging and an aging immune system on gut mucosal function.

Sankaran-Walters earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology from UC Davis in 2006. She earned a master’s degree in Biological Sciences from California State University, Sacramento, and a bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery from Madras Medical College in Chennai, India.

Sankaran-Walters most recently was published in the Journal of Acquired Deficiency Syndromes, Journal of Virology and the Journal of Immunology. She also contributed a chapter for the textbook Immunity Against Mucosal Pathogens.

Contact information: Phone: 530-752-3542 | Email: ssankaran@ucdavis.edu